


Scars

by Seda



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: And if they manage that there might just be a happy ending, Angst, F/F, Fluff, Smut, Wayhaught living and then TALKING about their shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2020-10-05 04:27:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 33,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20482850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seda/pseuds/Seda
Summary: How many times can Waverly watch Nicole get hurt?How many times can Nicole catch Waverly in a lie?And how, can they even, find their way back to each other?





	1. Fools rush in

**Author's Note:**

> I'd say this is the Waverly POV companion piece to Ghosts, but actually, once this is finished off, you'd probably see this as the story, and that as the one-shot interlude.
> 
> The timeline of this one is a little tricksy. It's canon-ish - sort of post season two in terms of character and relationship development? Except it pretty much ignores the actual events of season 3, in favour of common or garden canon revenant bashing.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Waverly makes some decisions

"YOU W I L L SUBMIT TO ME. I AM THE LORD OF P A I N!"

"Oh yeah? Well, I am the Lady of suck my - get a taste of - _ Hey_! That’s my _ gun_, you asshole!”

"YOU CANNOT HURT ME WITH THAT PUNY GUN! THE EARPS MUST DIE! ALL YOUR LINE MUST DIE. YOU - _AND_ YOUR SISTER!”

"No! No - Wave - get _ back _ dammit - Haught - _ HAUGHT_!"

"Nicole?! Oh my - _ Nicole!_ No no no, stop - _nooo!_"

*******

Waverly Earp waits in the emergency room of Purgatory General. Clothes dirtied, hair wild and singed at the edges from the fire and the fight, a storm of frustration and worry and hurt keeping her twisting in her seat, standing up and sitting down and checking with the harassed staff every five minutes if she can get in to see Nicole yet.

She _ hates _ this place. Hates the clinical disinfectant smell of it, the bright antiseptic lights. The bland uncomfortable chairs where rows and rows of people are waiting to see just how much their life is about to change. She hates the fact she’s on first name terms with the triage nurse, hates by association even the warm and friendly smile he throws her way after a murmured discussion with a doctor.

“You can go see her now - curtain five. She's gonna be okay - this time!"

Waverly manages a tight smile of thanks, but is not reassured, not until she’s seen her with her own two eyes. She hurries to and pulls aside the draped curtains, feeling that same old mix of emotions; relief and fear, anger and upset.

Because Nicole Haught, love of her life and in so very much trouble right now, is sat up in bed, clad in hospital blue, looking tired, drawn with pain: but palpably propped up still by her stupid, stubborn pride.

She flashes a rueful grin at Waverly, a little ashamed for sure, but definitely more than a little bit proud of herself too.

"Hey, baby - "

"Don't hey baby me! _ Look _ at you, Nicole." Waverly exhorts, reaching a hand out towards the scrapes all the way down her face, from where the demon had thrown her brutally hard into the dirt. Her fingers flutter lightly over the start of it, to where the marks disappeared under bandages, skimming down her cheek and lightly touching her chin, Nicole turning her head from side to side in chastened acquiescence to Waverly’s need to inspect. “Look at your face - look at your _ leg!_"

The bandaging there is heavier. Nicole had deliberately drawn, then just about rolled out the way of the demon's attack, trying to dodge the swipe of monstrous claws. And that half-second of distracting the demon, holding its attention even after it had repelled her insane charge straight at it, had been enough for Dolls to retrieve Peacemaker from where the demon had knocked it from Wynonna’s grip, get it back to her, and for her sister to let off the final shot.

“I took his mind off you though, right? And bought Wynonna enough time to finish him off - thank god!”

Nicole has that cocky, capable look about her that was a huge part of the package that Waverly first fell in love with. She still loves it, and it still does..._things_ to her. But she loves Nicole all the more now - so this makes her so angry, now, too.

Because yes Nicole had done her best to avoid getting hurt - but once again, her best had not been quite good enough. And three long, deep gouges cutting straight through her uniform pants deep into the white bloody flesh of her thigh had been her reward.

“But look at your _ leg!_” Waverly just repeats, hopelessly. She wipes at her eyes, not even bothering to acknowledge the frightened relieved tears that always start to fall at this point. They've been through this so many times already that both know the steps to this dance like a heartbeat. So it is that they both know it’s not about words right now, or fighting about what constitutes an appropriate level of risk-taking. Now she just gets as close as she can to Nicole, touching a shaking hand just below the line of the bandaging on a thigh, caressing a bare knee as the closest thing she can safely touch to the awful injury. 

Nicole leans to her too, and wraps a comforting arm around her shoulders. "Hey hey, it's okay. I've got another one, right?"

Waverly laugh-cries, and swats a gentle blow of rebuke into Nicole's stomach, as she just turns into the hug, her arms now slipping round Nicole's waist, mumbling her reply into Nicole's neck.

"Don't joke. It's not funny, Nicole. You could've died. Why did you do that? Why do you always _ do _ that?"

Nicole tightens the hug, carefully bringing up her other arm, IV line and all, to steady and surround her. She waits a second, before asking.

"You got the others?"

Waverly nods into her shoulder, holding her breath to try to keep down the tears. Nicole asks again, softer.

"And - you're all alright? Wynonna? Dolls?"

"Yeah. Yeah."

They hold each other, and Waverly cries, and Nicole hugs her tight and close, bringing a hand up to caress and stroke Waverly's hair, a little shook by her own cocktail of feelings. There's pride, and relief, sure: but the throbbing ache of her leg, still burning through the painkillers, combined with the shaky sick feeling of an adrenaline comedown has her feeling, she’ll admit privately to herself, really not so great at all.

But Waverly's here now. And she is calmed and comforted by the presence and touch of her girl; upset though she clear is with her, still clinging to her tight. And the feel of that - of being loved, and needed, and, yes, of being worth enough to be worried over...

Nicole closes her eyes, and squeezes her arms around Waverly once more, and feels the fear of the day fall away, to be replaced with the warmth and safety that is their love.

Because this is the most important thing of all - they're both safely through another battle. And Waverly's safely back in Nicole's arms. The feeling of that worth all of the pain, worth every last scar.

* * *

Black Badge Deputy Marshall Dolls stands in front of a whiteboard covered with photographs. The photos themselves range from crinkled edged sepia tones, to grainy black and white, through to sharp colour photos - but the subject matter in all is the same.

Bloody mangled bodies. Bodies that in the earliest shots are clad the same as the horrified onlookers; but with silver badges pinned to their shirts or vests. The later black and white photos show dark buttoned uniforms torn in two, torn skin too and blood soaking the jagged rends of the fabric. And latest of all, all-too colourful prints of high-vis police jackets, the red of blood this time showing up in stark contrast to the fluorescent yellow.

With his hands behind his back, and his tone authoritative, Dolls clears his throat, and starts on the business of the day.

"So, as we've been discussing, this one is a little unusual." 

He turns, to face his audience of two Earp sisters and a century old gunslinger. 

"From Waverly's research, it appears the trigger for the super-speed and violence that The Three demonstrate is seeing what they interpret as the Law. The hypothesis is that this is a complex started the first time Wyatt put them down, and reinforced every time since, given expression in increasing demonic power each time they arose. And that means we're all going in disguise this time. Civvies only."

Wynonna grins back at the serious air Dolls puts on in these briefings, gesturing to her black leather pants and tight, low-cut top.

"Er, excuse me Deputy Damn I forgot my glasses - get any more civil and you'd have to arrest me."

Dolls obstinately ignores her lascivious wink.

"Ha. Very funny Earp. You know what I mean - you are just as recognisable these days as the Earp heir from - that - " Dolls gestures awkwardly at the outfit, clinging in ways he does his steady best not to acknowledge "as Doc is over here in what he wore when he and Wyatt first put them down."

Doc, chewing on the end of a cigarello, raises his eyebrows in cool acknowledgement. 

"It is true, I am uncommonly consistent in my stylin'."

Waverly looks around the room, a step ahead and almost buzzing with eagerness as always.

"So, it's hoodies, we agreed, right Dolls?"

"Hoodies?" Wynonna laughs. "C'mon Dolls, I've done some shit for Black Badge - but I draw the line at sweats. Ew."

Dolls and Waverly meet her theatrical shudder with matching eyebrows-raised glares, until she capitulates with an eye-roll and an _ okay, okay,_ wave of her hands in the air.

"And we’re keeping Nicole out of this one, right?” Waverly says nervously. “What with the - “ she gestures at the horror show on the whiteboard. “I’ve checked, and she’s on duty, and so she’s just staying on civilian watch, right?"

This time Wynonna's eye-roll is accompanied by an audible tut and mutter.

"Must be nice being able to pick and choose your battles."

"Wynonna! We're not going through this again. She's the Sheriff now - she can't just drop everything any time something spooky comes up!"

"That's affirmative, Earp. Earps." Dolls chimes in, tone brooking no debate. "You've liaised with her about the nature of the threat to the Sheriff's Department, though?"

"Mm-hmm." Waverly says, picking at one of her nails.

Dolls turns back to Wynonna. "The plan is signed off without civilian forces support, given The Three's trigger. One sight of a uniform, and it's…"

He trails off, and just turns to look at the bloodied corpses on the board.

*******

"And you're absolutely sure you don't need police back-up for this one?"

Nicole is sitting behind the Sheriff's desk - her desk, now - with a mountain of paperwork in front of her, as Waverly perches on the edge, smiling down at her and fiddling with the fingers of Nicole's hand held loose in hers, much to both of their distraction

"No, honestly sweetie, I told you; it's a really easy one. Just one old, half-blind revenant - almost seems a shame to have to do it, but you know we're getting close to the seventy seven now. It's gotta be done."

"Okay..." Nicole's never quite reconciled herself to the callousness of the Earps' mission. All she knows is that it is what's necessary to one day, have Waverly be safe. So she deflects the conflict she feels into a familiar grumble.

"Well, I don't know why they need you there at all, then. Can't your sister take care of this one on her own, if it's so straight-forward?"

"Oh, I'll barely be there at all," Waverly says breezily, flapping a hand as if to distract Nicole from the fact of her not meeting her eye. "I'll just be in the background, taking photos and recording. I'll have enough stories about all this to write a book, some day!"

"Hmm." Nicole says doubtfully, finding herself further distracted by Waverly slipping her hand out of hers, smoothing it up her arm, and then turning around and quickly checking the door to her office is firmly closed before slipping from her perch on Nicole's desk, to her lap, wrapping her arms round Nicole's neck, and leaning up for a kiss.

"And then tonight we're both off, and I'm coming round to yours, and you'll have me - " Waverly punctuates her words with fingertip boops to Nicole's nose, lips, chin - "All. To. Your. Self. Promise you’ll wait til then, though?"

"Hmm.” says Nicole again. “Well..."

Waverly smiles a bright, teasing smile. Leans in again and kisses her again, slower, more insistent; deeper.

“Hmm. Mmmm…”

*******

Two hours later, and Nicole is getting twitchy.

She's not heard from either Earp, and though for such a low risk revenant she wouldn't necessarily expect to get an immediate update, her stomach is turning over and over, and her police instinct is nagging at her that something somewhere feels just not quite right.

She simply can't keep her head in the man-power and budget conundrum she's been wrestling with, and so giving up with a sigh, she gets up, to drift out to the bullpen.

"Lonnie. Maxine. How is it?"

"Quiet, Sheriff. I'm just followin' up on these - "

The lights on the dispatch system flicker to life. Maxine hits a button, and Nicole stares hard, as if she could pull the information out faster by willpower alone.

"Purgatory Sheriff's Dep - whoa whoa slow down - uh huh? Okay. Okay. Can you confirm the address for me? And what's - okay. Right. And your name? - aw shoot!"

Maxine grimaces at the screen, and then turns to Nicole.

"They hung up. Fight reported breaking out at the trailer park, between the residents and, would you believe it, some youth gang in hoodies? Multiple shots reported, with possible injuries - all units?"

Nicole feels like a bucket of ice water has been tipped down her spine; and a sick, dead feeling coils in her gut. Waverly had been in a hoody, earlier. She'd said something about going in incognito?

"I've got it." she says, heading off to the locker room to don her bullet proof jacket.

"But Sheriff - "

"I've _ got _ it, Maxine. Lonnie, you stay here, man the station. Wait for further calls - there might be - ah, there might be more calls. Maxine, get an ambulance out there behind me - actually, you know what, make that two. Get them to send everyone they've got."

Two worried sets of eyes follow her out the door.

*******

Wynonna crouches, panting, behind a burnt out wreck of a car. Her line of sight is clear through to Doc's hiding place, and though she can't see Dolls perched on the roof of the trailer, she knows from the plans they'd pored over and rehearsed for days he'd be there, and exactly what routes his sniper rifle would cover.

She gets ready to run, nods once to Doc. She keeps an eye on him, waiting for his signal. Which comes, with a toss of a handful of pebbles and a wild cowboy hollering to split the tense thick silence of the stand-off.

“Hey boys! Come and get you some Holliday lead!”

His hat is waved out behind the trailer, enough to draw two whining rounds of gun-fire, one of which hits their mark and has Doc’s hat spinning off into the air.

No matter - it’s his back-up hat, all he’d risk for that tactic - and it's enough distraction for Wynonna to sneak out of her own hiding place unseen, and sprint along the pre-ordained path, waiting til the last possible minute before she's close to the next point of safety, and makes an angle where she can let off a shot...

“Y_es! _ Yes, mama!” she can’t help but hiss out under her breath as she punches the air simultaneously to skidding to safety. Her bullet had reached its mark, and the last thing she’d seen before ducking behind a beat up, wheel-less caravan propped up on bricks, was the burning red eyes of the revenant as he clawed at the earth, vainly trying to resist the pull back down to hell. The third and last of their outfit screamed in rage, spinning frantically in circles, waving his gun, spooked at these unseen, unstoppable assailants.

They’d been playing cat-and-mouse like this around the abandoned trailers at the outskirts of the park for over twenty minutes now. Waverly was watching and directing them all from a concealed vantage point high up on a pile of junk close to the entrance to the park, calling each play through the two way radios Jeremy had them kitted them out with.

Waverly's voice was tense, tight, but in control - her little sister had been decisive, and expert, so far at least, at keeping them all safe; whilst maneuvering the revenants like chess pieces on a board, expertly and inexorably guiding them to their end.

“_Great _job, baby-girl. Two down, one to go. Right, give me a second, okay? Just reloading.” Wynonna murmurs under her breath, trying to get her breathing a little steadier, too. 

“Roger that, bacon donut. Final target looks like he’s pissing his little revenant pants!”

“Why I do believe you’re giving your great great granddaddy a run for his money with that shootin'.”

Wynonna grins, unseen, at Waverly’s pep even at a time like this, and Doc’s comment on her accuracy - the highest compliment a gunslinger such as himself can possibly pay. 

God she loves her team.

“Keep it cool, guys.” comes Dolls’ voice. “This last one’s the most dangerous. And I’ll remind you again - “

“Keep out of sight!” comes the joint reply from Wynonna, Waverly, and Doc in chorus; sarcastic, earnest, and bored, respectively.

Wynonna chuckles. “Yeah, we know Dolls.”

“I’m just saying. Even with our outfits it’s a danger if he sees us - there is still a chance his power’s triggered.”

Waverly steps in, big sistering her big sister. “Listen to him, Wynonna. I can’t keep you safe if he’s running about like a cheetar on speed.”

Wynonna grins. “Got it, Angel Pants. Okay. So - hang on. Hang on! Does anyone else hear that?”

“Shit!”

“What is that? Sirens?!”

“What?! No - shit! Shitting shitting - _shitballs_! Okay, everyone stay where they are! I’m thinking!”

The police siren gets louder, and closer, and Waverly watches the final revenant standing, stock still, his shoulders bent and his head bowed. Until, just visible to Waverly’s panicking scrutiny, he starts to _vibrate_.

And then he straightens. And looks up. And his eyes are red, and his hand is white where it grips his gun, and his face is a rictus grin of insane, evil, hatred.

The police cruiser pulls up in a screech of brakes and dust, and Sheriff Nicole Haught steps out. She looks around her, seeing the trailer park apparently deserted, not seeing anything or anyone at all.

She takes one step forward, gun outstretched, looking cautiously and carefully around her.

She takes another.

And then sees just a flash, an impossible rush, and then there’s a violent impact that knocks the breath from her lungs and she’s flung backwards, and the last thing she knows before her body and head crash hard into the metal and glass of her cruiser, is Waverly Earp’s terrified scream.

* * *

The hospital, again.

Nicole is still unconscious, blue gown and red hair and face nearly as pale as the white sheets on which she lies, motionless, whilst at the end of her bed, two Earps talk to the neurologist.

Wynonna is grim faced, an arm wrapped tight around her sister, who’s own arms are wrapped around her middle, trying to hold on to herself, trying to hold the tears back again.

“It’s another concussion at minimum, and coming so soon after the last one I have to tell you is not good for her. I understand it happened in the line? Had she had a fitness to work assessment by the Sheriff’s Department after the last occurrence?"

Waverly nods, miserably. “It said there was a risk, but she’s the Sheriff. She makes the decisions, and if she says she’s fit to work…”

She trails off. She’s not going to go into all their arguments on this.

“Well. I can tell you that the scan didn't show anything up, and you should feel very reassured by that. But I'm afraid we won’t know for sure how she is until she wakes up - we spoke about this last time. It’s not good for a person to have repeated blows to the head. If she were a boxer I'd be telling her she needed to hang up her gloves, but I appreciate it's not exactly the same thing in policing. But if it would help for me to write a letter - ?”

“Oh yes _ please - _” “Let's talk to her when she - "

The sisters answer at the same time, and Waverly instantly bristles at Wynonna's response, pulling away from her, cold rage taking over her usually sunny face.

"I'm sorry, _what_ were you about to say?!"

"Waverly..." Wynonna says, warningly.

“I don’t _ care_, Wynonna. I don’t care what - “ she looks at the doctor, frustration evident. “What ‘criminals’ are still out there. She needs to stay safe. And if you don't understand that, I'm sorry but you need to go. Just _ go._”

“Waves…”

“Go, Wynonna! I don’t want you in here, okay? Just - leave!”

*******

“Baby?”

It’s late. Visiting hours are well over. But Waverly Earp is known around here now; and has her own powers of persuasion even aside from her frequent flyer pass. So it is that she’s still sitting by Nicole’s bedside, hours later, holding Nicole’s hand, in the dark room, whilst Nicole sleeps on.

“Baby, I know you’re not hearing this. But I’ve something I need to say.”

She looks down, for a second. These thoughts have been running through her head for hours. What difference does it make saying them out loud, when Nicole can’t hear?

Still, she hesitates. And her voice drops to a whisper, as she looks up to Nicole’s slumbering face, with guilty, helpless eyes.

“You never signed up for this. You never knew what you were getting into, when you first met me. I’m so sorry, Nicole. I should’ve pushed you away, harder. But you were just so - “

She shakes her head, exhaling a frustrated puff of breath.

“You were just so _ nice._ And you were so kind to me, just when I needed it most, and you were so - _ so _ beautiful. And I - I just wanted you so much. But I’m sorry. I’ve been so selfish. You don’t deserve this.”

She shakes her head. This one plays on repeat, every time she’s at the hospital.

“You don’t deserve any of this. And I - I love you. I love you so much, Nicole. You do know that, don’t you? But I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know if I can go through this again, with you.

I know I can’t - ”

The tears, long overdue, finally come, and Waverly has to force the final confession out in between hitching breaths.

“I know I can’t lose you. I need to keep you safe. I need you to be safe.”

Then she leans her head down, forehead to Nicole’s still hand on the bed. And lets the terrible relief of the decision she's made wash through and out of her in the form of great, wracking sobs.

* * *

“Hey, baby! I didn’t know you were coming round - come in, come in!”

Days later and Nicole is at home, convalescing: or, as she has been grumpily being characterising it to anyone who will listen, stuck under house arrest with nothing but an overweight cat and a stack of departmental policy updates for company.

Waverly smiles at her, a little tightly, and then slips quickly past her girlfriend, dodging Nicole’s attempt to pull her into a hug.

Nicole frowns. But it’s a bright, sunny day, and the clean open space that is her living room is lit up by the heavy liquid gold of springtime sun pouring through the windows, painting everything bright, and fresh, and new. It's hard to feel bad on a day like this; and anyway, she's still somewhat riding the high that comes from seeing your life flash before your eyes, and surviving. Plus of course, any unexpected visit from Waverly is always welcome. Even if she does look more than a little on edge, today.

“Baby? Is everything alright?”

That tight smile, again. But Waverly tilts her head, and assesses Nicole first.

“Everything’s fine. How are you? Any dizzyness today? Come on, sit down, please.”

Nicole begrudgingly lets Waverly guide her to sit down again. In truth, she is still a little short of her best. She’s sure she’ll get back into the swing of things as soon as she’s back at work, but the headaches are still bad, and, yes, she’s still feeling dizzy and nauseous more often than she’d really like.

“So-o. What’s up? Trouble at the homestead? Little Timmy stuck down the well? Or Doc, again?”

Nicole’s looking up at her, eyes shining, that almost goofy smile of love and affection on her face. Waverly has to turn away, and swallow.

“We need to talk.”

She’s not facing Nicole, but she can practically hear the stunned silence, before the reply comes in cautious, worried tones.

“O-kay. What about? Is everything alright, Wave?”

“Not really, no.” Waverly can hear the tremor in her own voice, and still can’t look anywhere near Nicole. “We need to talk about when you got hurt. You lied to me, Nicole.”

That silence, again. So long this time, Waverly has to look. And then actually flinches, as she sees Nicole’s hurt, confused face.

“I lied? When?”

“I said you shouldn’t come. And you still did.”

“Oh, now come on Waves, there was a call. What was I supposed to - “

“I said you shouldn’t come and you still came!”

“Okay, look, that’s not fair - you didn’t exactly explain why I shouldn’t come, did you? And actually - if we’re going to do this - you lied to me, first. You said it was just some old revenant. It wasn’t though, was it?"

Waverly's guilty, miserable bite of the lip is no answer at all to that.

"Yeah. Dolls filled me in. A set of revenants that had it out for officers of the law? You knew that, and you didn’t tell me? Forget about me for a second - have you any idea how _unbelievably_ dangerous that was for my officers? To be walking around out there with this known threat - and you didn’t say anything? That's not okay, Waverly."

Waverly feels this like a punch in her gut. Nicole was right, of course she was. She’s been so selfish. Somebody could have died. _Nicole_ could have died. She just wanted to keep her safe, but what was she thinking? She’s so stupid. She’s such a child.

She wants to fall on her knees, beg forgiveness, promise Nicole she'll never be so idiotic again. But she needs to keep up this charade of a fight, keep Nicole mad enough at her that she can find the pivot point that will allow her to do what she came here to do.

She looks at Nicole. Oh god, she can’t do this. She can’t do this.

She _ has _to do this. She has to go on with what she’d planned to say. 

“Don't raise your voice at me. Revenants aren’t your business.” 

_ Damn it_, Waverly thinks, as she realises she’s crying. She hadn’t meant to cry. “Revenants are me, and Wynonna, and they’re _ not _ you. You don't have the right to be angry at me for that, okay? You do your job, and we’ll do ours.”

“What the hell Waverly? How exactly are revenants not my business? In my town?! Can I just remind you that when I turned up shots had been reported fired in a residential area and - ” 

"We had a _ plan _ and you got in the way and you got _ hurt_! Again! And I just can’t - "

Waverly’s conscious of the pain and worry in her voice, and knows Nicole will be able to hear it too, so she takes a breath and bends every last bit of her will to take that emotion, and twist it into anger. Tries to convince Nicole that the anger is for her, not for the impossible decision she’s been forced to take.

“I can’t be with someone I can’t trust. Okay? Everyone’s left me. Everyone. And I can’t be with someone who is going to just do something _ stupid _ and _ noble _ and _ heroic _ and get themselves killed and just _ leave _ me - who - someone I can’t trust. And I can’t trust you, anymore, Nicole. Okay? I can’t do this. I can’t do this. We’re done.”

Nicole stands, and the look of pure bewildered shock and care as she steps towards her is nearly enough to change Waverly’s mind, right there and then.

“Waverly? What’s going on? I - this isn't great, but I love you, okay? Whatever’s going on, we can talk about it. We can fix it.”

But then Nicole sways in reaching for her, and has to steady herself, and that is reminder enough.

“Love’s not enough. Not in Purgatory. Goodbye, Nicole.”

She doesn’t look back, as she heads straight out and slams the door, tears cascading down her face, as she runs down the steps, away from Nicole and the awful, terrible, unbelievable thing she's just done. The fresh breeze and bright sunny air of a warm Purgatory spring cutting at her, like the thin sharp knives of winter’s ice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, Waverly, Waverly, Waverly.
> 
> Much like the end notes for Ghosts - I apologise for, but stand by, the writing of her actions and emotions here.


	2. Grief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Waverly struggles in the aftermath of her decision

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a bit of a toughy, this one.
> 
> I promise you though, it does get better. This is the worst of it.

_Friday 17.47_

_Waverly? Can we talk about this?_

_Friday 17.48_

_I don’t understand what just happened. Can I call you?_

_Friday 20.29_

_Can you please let me know that you’re alright? I'm worried about you._

_Friday 21.34 [missed call]_

_Friday 21.35_

_It’s Purgatory, Waves. You need to let me know that you’re getting these messages, at least._

_Friday 21.54_

_I’m getting them._

_Friday 21.55_

_Are you okay?_

_Friday 22.33_

_Waverly? Please tell me you're okay?_

_Saturday 00.33_

_Waves?_

_Saturday 06.54_

_So. I’ve just woken up. That really just happened?_

_Saturday 08.33_

_You’re not possessed again?!_

_Saturday 08.34_

_Sorry. That’s not funny. But seriously, Waverly. I kind of can’t believe it. Did that really happen? Did you really just break up with me??_

_Saturday 9.03_

_Yes. Please stop texting me. Don't call me._

_ Saturday 09.04 [missed call]_

_Saturday 09.44 [missed call]_

_Saturday 09.48_

_Okay. Okay. I don't understand what's going on here. But I'll respect what you're asking for._

_Sunday 14.48_

_Wave? I know you asked me to stop, but I just can’t believe what’s happened. I love you, Waverly. You know that, don't you? Why have you done this??_

_Sunday 16.55_

_Okay. I’m going to try to give you some space. But I’m here. If you change your mind. Or if you just want to talk. Or anything. I’m here, okay, Waves? I love you. I love you so so much._

_ *******_

_Tuesday 16.52_

_Hey, Waverly. So, first day back at work. Just desk work today! Thank God - the paperwork looks like your sister has been at it! I hope you’re doing alright? I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and I understand this past couple of weeks must have been really stressful for you. But I’m alright! Everything’s going to be alright. And we can face anything, if we're together! I love you, Waverly._

_Tuesday 16.56_

_I miss you, too._

_Wednesday 12.04_

_Okay I’m trying to give you space but Wynonna’s at the station and she says she doesn’t know what happened either. I’m sorry, Waves. Honestly I’m so sorry, and I promise I will try harder to listen to you. I promise, okay? Can we just talk about this? Please?_

_Wednesday 18.57_

_Waverly? This isn’t fair. You owe me the chance to explain. You owe ME an explanation. You can’t just do this without talking about it. Call me, okay?_

_Wednesday 23.02_

_I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. Please just call me. Please. Or let me call you. Or - I just need to talk to you. I love you, Waverly. Please let me call you?_

_Wednesday 23.04_

_There’s nothing to talk about. We’re over._

_Wednesday 23.05 [missed call]_

_Wednesday 23.06 [missed call]_

_Thursday 00.12 [missed call]_

* * *

Waverly spends more time staring down at her phone’s messages than when she and Nicole were together.

More time even than before they were dating, when the giddy excitement of a single text was enough to make her day, have her skipping to her work, have her grab Wynonna in an exuberant hug of secret possibility and hope.

Now all she’s got are Nicole’s unanswered attempts to broker some sort of dialogue about what she’s done. It hurts to read them, but she hates herself so much for letting it all come to this in the first place, that she lets them hurt her. Deliberately welcomes the punishment as she reads them, over and over again.

She reads_ 'I miss you, too',_ maybe fifty times a day.

*******

She wants to call Nicole back, so so much. She misses her voice on the phone, murmuring low and private in her ear late at night, those rare evenings they couldn't spend together. She misses her laugh, the smile she could hear in the easy answer of 'Hey, baby' when Waverly called her. The combined jittering excitement and settled calm that Nicole's voice on the other end of the line always inspired in her.

She nearly gives in and replies to Nicole's texts, a hundred times over. But she knows that if she allows just a hint, just the tiniest sign she might be missing Nicole back, she _knows_ that would be enough of an opening for Nicole to come running, and to maybe not take no for an answer. And Waverly knows full well she doesn't have it in her to refuse the temptation of that.

So instead she reminds herself of why she’s done what she has done.

Staring down at Nicole's latest pleading message, she forces herself to remember the feeling of sitting next to Nicole's hospital bed. Forces herself to recall the gnawing anxiety of not knowing if Nicole is going to wake up, or if she is, if she’s going to wake up truly Nicole at all. 

She makes herself remember how sick Nicole looks, when she's hurt. Remembers that even when she recovers, that each of these injuries leaves their imprint on her body. Remembers every scar that she, her and her accursed family, has left on Nicole.

She’s been haunted by these scars, day in, day out. But at night?

She thinks about those scars, again. 

The jagged edges of the twisted shiny pink skin that never knitted together quite right, from the poisened widow’s bite. The mark by her hairline, from when she herself had flung Nicole across the Earp barn. _It was Mictian_, says the kinder, logical part of herself. _Maybe_, the greater part of her responds. _But you were too scared, too stupid, to ask for help before it got to that point. Too weak to fight Mictian off when it had._

She remembers more fondly the small line, just above her right eye; one scar at least that Nicole had carried into Purgatory. She remembers looking at it curiously, running a tentative finger over it, back when they were new. Wanting to ask, but not wanting to pry; Nicole catching her and offering with a wry grin that it was the first serious incident in her long accident prone life. A bad tumble off her bike as a little girl, when trying to pop a wheeley - the scar, and the respect of the neighbourhood boys, just reward for her stupidity and bravery.

Waverly remembers laughing indulgently at that. What a time, when Nicole's bravery was simply a thing to be impressed by!

She knows she'll never forget the bruise on her ribcage from the impact of the bullet proof vest, that time after Willa. True, those marks had soon faded away after the incident. But the angry blues and blacks, then fading browns and greens of the bruise were even now etched clearly in Waverly’s mind’s eye: the first time Waverly had thought she might lose Nicole a memory not so easily shifted.

Waverly remembers too tending to this injury, remembers the conflicting feelings of tender affection and care, and a certain heart-racing excitement, because her new girlfriend's top was pulled up, and she could see the softness of her skin, the start of the curve of a breast...

And that then leads easily on to the memory of a chicken-pox scar, just above her hip. That deep pockmark Waverly had discovered, that very first time. The memory of it, of kissing it, of kissing the rise of Nicole's hipbone, the dip of her thigh...of Nicole’s gasped intake of breath, and then the slow, sensual release.

Waverly can’t help but think of all of this, late at night. Can’t help but think of Nicole this way. She misses her; aches for her, every beautiful marked part of her.

But she can’t have her - she knows she can’t. She’s resolved she can’t. She knows she needs to stop falling for the hollow comfort of these memories.

*******

So one night, she decides. She might not be able to stop thinking of Nicole like this. But perhaps she can think of her, but in a way so bad that it'll force open the crack in her heart. Wide enough that it can never be bridged again.

So she thinks of Nicole in bed with someone else. Some other girl. _No, not some stupid, inexperienced girl again,_ Waverly miserably thinks. _A woman. Yes; a woman, a real, lesbian woman._

Someone Nicole doesn't have to teach everything to, someone who can easily please Nicole. Somebody easy, and simple, and fun, and somebody most important of all, _not Earp,_ discovering those secret places on Nicole's body. Ignorant of the stories behind them, but running their hands and tongue over them just the same.

She forces herself to think of Nicole react to that touch. Thinks of the way she is so patient, right until she isn't any more; imagines her grasping and turning that somebody over, and running her own lips and tongue over _ them_.

Waverly feels hot and sad and desperate, and turns on her side, and closes her eyes, shaking her head against these so so vivid images, pressing her face into the cold pillow below. But her imagination still runs on, and so she thinks almost helplessly of Nicole touching this other woman, moving to lie on this other woman, pressing and holding her down. Kissing her. 

And it's the worst thing Waverly can countenance. It _hurts_; it takes all the pain she’s been living with, and concentrates it down, and turns it into a sharp blade of unbearable jealousy and loss. But it’s still Nicole, and in these imaginings Nicole is naked, is stripped bare, is lit by flickering candlelight, and she's powerful and contained and in control, and this other woman is under her, giving her pleasure back too, and it’s _Nicole _taking that pleasure...so perhaps it's not surprising that Waverly’s hand moves down her own body, and as she imagines Nicole kissing this other woman, this other woman’s hands moving unknowing over the history that is Nicole’s scarred skin, Waverly touches herself too. She touches herself, as Nicole touches this woman, gives all her attention to this woman, moves on her, sensuous and steady, touching her...making slow, serious love to this other woman. Fucking her. Kiss - _God_ \- _kissing_ her. Making her shake, and cry out, and cling onto Nicole when she - 

Waverly comes, all in a rush. And only then registers the tears soaked into the pillow, and then adds to them, as the two ghostly bodies slip away back to their own world again, leaving Waverly alone, in the dark of her room and her thoughts.

* * *

“Waverly? Are you still not ready? We’ve got to hussle, babygirl, we've gotta meet Dolls in - _Waves_? What in the name of holy baby bejeebus happened here?”

Wynonna has walked into her younger sister's room to find her clad only in gaudily patterned yoga pants and a teal bra, stood amidst a chaos of clothes. Piles strewn in front of her on the bed, surrounding her on the floor; spilling out of half-open draws. And Waverly stood in the middle of it all, her face drawn, thin looking with her jaw clenched tight in anxiety.

"I can't find anything to _wear!_"

"Uh, Waves?" Wynonna chuckles uncertainly. "It's a night-time sting-op, not the Oscars. You just need some sweats - "

"I can't just wear _sweats_ Wynonna, I've got to stay stealthy, and all my - " she bends and picks up a bright orange sleeveless top, then throws it on the bed; sees something there and dives under that pile to pull free a darker looking something, which upon holding up turns out to be striped with bright slashes of green and purple. "All my workout gear looks like this! Why do I have to buy stuff like this, Wynonna? Why are all my clothes so - _stupid_?"

Wynonna stands rooted to the spot, a little confused at the state her sister has got herself in. Then has an idea, clicking her fingers "Oh hey - but you've got that great outfit for night-ops, right?" She smiles encouragingly. "You know, that black stuff, with the gear pockets, and the protection and the fire retardant - "

"I can't wear that."

Waverly has turned away, and her tone is clipped and tight.

"Umm. Why not? This is literally what it's made for."

The reply comes in a whisper.

"_She_ got me those."

Wynonna rolls her eyes, unseen. "Okay. Right, for chrissakes Waverly. This has got to stop. I get that you're upset, and I get that it's hard. But this is not a gameshow, baby girl. This is dangerous stuff we're doing. If you can't handle that, and if you can't do what you need to deal with it - "

Waverly whirls round, and Wynonna takes a step back, at the blazing eyes of her suddenly furious little sister.

"I've _dealt_ with it! I'm _dealing_ with it, okay? I know it's dangerous! Ohh, boy do I know it's dangerous! Don't you dare accuse me of forgetting for one _second_ that this is dangerous! And don't you _dare_ imply I'm stupid, Wy! I know it's dangerous and I - am _dealing_ with that!"

"Whoa, whoa! I never meant you were stupid, Waverly. I know you know. Just - this outfit thing - isn't that just, like, a teensy bit - "

Waverly glares, and Wynonna trails off. Tries a different tack.

"You know, if you're not feeling it tonight, I can call Dolls. They're not going anywhere."

"I'm okay." Waverly turns away again, picks up a grey and pale blue long-sleeved shirt, and giving it one last baleful look, shrugs it on.

"Right. Well. I'm not sure you look alright Waves. I know you've been having a hard time lately. And I'm not wild about taking you out there if you're in this sort of state."

"I'm fine."

Wynonna can see the rise and hunch of Waverly's shoulders, the shake in her voice.

She takes a step forwards. Reaches out a tentative hand to Waverly's shoulder. "Hey, sis. I know you said you didn't want to talk about it. But I think - I think it might help if you said what happened? If you explained why you did - "

"Oh, you just automatically assume I did it?"

Wynonna frowns, confused. "Well - and, didn't you?"

Waverly's quiet, a second.

_"_No_. _Ask her. She did it, not me."

Wynonna's hand drops from her sister's shoulder and, instinct or not, closes on Peacemaker's handle. And hears the cold steel in her own low tone.

"What? She did exactly _what_, Waverly."

Waverly's voice in contrast is now rising, crossed fully over into the high, plaintive, tearful sob, that they have both been living with these past weeks.

"_She_ did it. It was _her_ fault. I didn't do _anything_. It was all her. She said she couldn't get hurt again, and she needed to do her job, and then she just _left!_"

Wynonna stands one second, jaw clenched. And then turns on her heel, leaving Waverly to her tears, and to the awful mess that she's made.

*******

"Haught! Haught! I know you're in there! Open up, goddamn it!"

Wynonna is thumping hard on Nicole's door, neighbours' curtain twitching at this nighttime disturbance be damned.

"Open the _frickin'_ door, Nicole. I _swear_ to God - "

The door swings open, and Wynonna doesn't miss a beat, grabbing two hands into Nicole's shirt, pushing her inside, kicking the door shut, wheeling her around and shoving Nicole up against it, hard, spitting her words right up into her face.

"You _shit_! You fucking little _shit_! I've been leaving you be because you said she did this, and I _believed_ you, but you lying, deceiving, _shit! _What the hell do you think you're doing? She's _broken_ because of you, do you know that? She's a mess! I thought you were different, you know? You really had me convinced you were different! But no, how stupid can I be? Of course no-one sticks around for us. And you're just going on fine and dandy, all, oooh, look at me, I'm the Sheriff, and I'm fine thank you very much, and the Earps can just go to hell..."

She'd been so quickly into her rage, the heat of it powering her cascading words, her frustration having her pulling and slamming Nicole back into the door again and again, that it takes this long before her brain catches up with her emotions.

Because Nicole does not, in fact, look fine.

Her skin, even for Nicole, looks pale and sallow. There's dark rings under her eyes. And Nicole is just letting Wynonna push and pull her around, not putting up any resistance, letting herself be shoved into the door easy as a rag-doll. Plus, Wynonna knows her whiskey, and, yes, Nicole's breath smells of whiskey. Her eyes don't meet Wynonna's, just drift away and down to the side.

She looks resigned. Beaten.

She doesn't look much like Nicole Haught at all.

"You...you...you've done something unforgivable, Haught."

Nicole finally looks up, and meets Wynonna's eyes. And the raw, helpless pain there hits Wynonna just as hard as a blow.

"Did I? What did I do? Please tell me. Because I honestly don't know."

Wynonna frowns, thrown. But anger has been churning in her gut since she'd left Waverly's side, and there's enough left it still pushes her on.

"You left her. You got her to love her, and then when things got most tough, you split. When - you _know_ how much she's afraid of people leaving her."

Nicole actually laughs, incredulous.

"I left _her_? Is that what she's telling you? Right. Well, and anyway. Maybe if you hadn't abandoned her so many times when she was just a kid, she wouldn't be quite so scared of that."

"_What_ did you just say?"

Wynonna can't tell if she's more furious at Nicole for what she's done to Waverly, or what she's saying now. How dare Nicole, an outsider, come in and say these things? How dare she be so _right_?

Nicole leans forward, still in Wynonna's grasp, and meets her, eye to eye. And very deliberately, goes on.

"Maybe if you hadn't fucked her up quite so badly, she wouldn't be too damaged to have a normal adult relationship."

Wynonna's anger bursts into white hot rage and before she knows it, she's drawing a fist back, and though they're still pressed too close for a full swing she manages a dirty street-fighting uppercut. Nicole turns her face away at the last moment in instinct, but it still catches a glancing blow to her face, knocking her head back into the door again, and with that it's like she's suddenly come to life again, and Wynonna realises just what she's up against as all five foot nine of Nicole surges forward, grabbing a corner of Wynonna's jacket and hooking a leg round hers, and pulling and twisting, and Wynonna's tripped and they both tumble to the hard wood floor, and where there was just a shadow of Nicole before, now she's all there, oh she's there alright, fire and fury, pinning Wynonna to the ground, hovering above her, all power and rage and desperate, burning pain.

"_You_ broke her, Wynonna! You and all your _goddamned_ family and your goddamned stupid _curse_! I found her, and I loved her, and I tried to be everything to her, and I thought I was - I thought I was _fixing_ her! I thought we could be happy! But she's not - I don't know - I don't know how to fix it any more! I don't _know_ what happened! What did I do, Wynonna? I love her, I'd never leave her! What did I do? What can I do? I love her so much. And I miss her, I just miss her so, so much..."

Wynonna lies still, not putting up any resistance now but just watching this play out. Until Nicole's eyes close, her head rocking from side to side in vain refusal of the tears that are now forming, running down her nose and then falling down onto Wynonna's own face. Nicole's hands are still pinning her arms to the floor, but she can feel the grip loosen, see Nicole's shoulders start to shake.

"Hey. Hey, Haughtstuff. Shh, dude, it's okay. Just - just let me up a second, okay? Okay. There. Now, just. Come here, dude. C'mere. Oh, dude, I know, I know. Ohh, Nicole."

*******

It's later.

They're still on the floor, but now sat side by side, backs propped up against Nicole's couch. Sat quiet in the half-light of the single lamp that has been all Nicole's been able to face living under lately.

They're both holding whiskeys, necessary weaponry and armour for the conversation to come. Nicole's still wiping at her red eyes, but absently, like it's more habit than anything. She's stopped crying now, but seems worn out from it. Shoulders sloped and her head still shaking, periodically, from side to side.

Wynonna takes a breath. Where to begin.

"I'm sorry I hit you, dude. That wasn't cool."

"I'm not. It was actually good to feel something like that. Instead of just - you know."

Wynonna raises her own eyebrows in unseen acknowledgement. Yeah. She knows something about that.

Nicole offers the next olive branch.

"I'm sorry I said you broke her."

"Huh. Well, I kinda did, though, didn't I?"

"No - come on. No. I mean, I know she found it all really hard, but that wasn't your fault. You were just a kid too, Way. I mean, with your family..."

"Yeah. Our family."

That's enough to shut them both up for a while. Just thinking, taking quiet sips of their whiskeys.

"I genuinely don't know what happened, Wynonna. She said that I lied to her, and that she can't trust me. And I know we've had a few - well, yes, fine, we've had some - issues about that. But I really thought we'd learned to talk about - " she waves her hand vaguely. "All that stuff."

Wynonna sighs. "I don't know, Haught. I know that sounds like a small thing. But you know how determined she is when she gets an idea in her head."

Nicole exhales, half a wry, maybe even fond, laugh.

"Yeah. Don't I know it. I just - it feels like there must be something else."

Wynonna takes another contemplative sip.

"Well. Maybe? But then why isn't she telling us what it is? We're both here for her, right? Why isn't she just talking to us about whatever it is?"

A bitter laugh this time. "Oh yeah, right, like your sister regularly does. Like she told you about me, straight away. Like she talked to us, the first second she felt odd after touching that goo. Like she talked to you, before giving up Bulshar's ring for me. Yeah, like Waverly always does."

"Fuck. Yeah. Okay. I see your point."

"But I guess it doesn't matter, anyhow." Nicole looks down at the cubes of ice, melting and settling into her whiskey. Seeing nothing, or maybe, seeing what might have been; thinking about what her life will now instead be. Acknowledging for maybe the first time, the reality, and the full extent of her loss.

She downs the contents of the glass, wincing a little as it goes down.

"She's made up her mind. She's made that very clear. Waverly's decided. We've all just got to live with that."

Wynonna takes a deep breath, and sighs. Leans a brief nudge of a shoulder into Nicole's. And then picks up the bottle by her side, and, bypassing the nicety of her glass, takes a swig straight from the neck. Offers it wordlessly to Nicole, who takes it, and does exactly the same.

* * *

Waverly Earp stands at the homestead sink, staring listlessly down at the dishes.

She can’t seem to concentrate on what she’s doing, so she lifts her head up to look outside.

It’s grey.

Everything's grey, these days.

The dull steel grey of winter prairie clouds cast the outlook so completely in bland indifference that all contrast and detail in the fields and hills is gone, everything rendered flat and washed out and featureless.

She looks down again. There’s a thin skud of grease and bubbles on the surface, and she watches her own hands move that around the rim of a glass. She’s not sure it’s any cleaner than when it went in, but lifts it out and stacks it anyway. 

She'd put the frying pan in first without thinking, so the water’s all dirty. She meant to leave that til last. She’s done it all wrong. She can’t get anything right these days.

It didn't used to be like this.

She remembers that it used to be warm, once.

She remembers making breakfast here for Nicole. She remembers the feel of it, the golden warmth of a sunny Sunday morning; the golden warmth of content that she'd feel, any morning that she woke up with Nicole.

She remembers standing at the sink just like this, rinsing the last of the dishes from one of their late breakfasts. Remembers the feeling of Nicole slipping in behind her at the sink, her long arms wrapping around her waist, the safety and comfort that was Nicole's warm body firm against her back. How she'd instinctively lean and nestle back into the cradle of her tall girlfriend's arms, sometimes with an audible sigh, or a delighted wriggle of simple bodily content. Nicole would lean, and duck a smiling kiss to her neck, and tighten those arms for a blissful moment, holding her tight and close. How she'd always kiss her again, her cheek maybe this time, before slipping off to finish up straightening the rest of the kitchen.

Waverly wipes then stacks another glass, dripping water off to the side of the sink as she does so; and then notices more water splash and gather on the near edge of the sink too, blearily wondering where it’s coming from.

_ Oh, that’s right,_ she thinks. _ I’m crying again. _

She barely gives it any notice. Doesn’t wipe her eyes, her nose even, just sniffs, and continues the chore. This is just what she does, now.

“Waverly, have you borrowed my red halter top? Dolls has called me in for some ‘debriefing’ and I swear it’s the only thing that’s got a chance of stopping him droning on about - ”

The droplets have gathered, and Waverly watches through swimming vision as they pool, then run off the near side of the counter. For all Waverly cares, they can grow, and flood, and wash the whole no-good world clean away.

“Waverly? Waves? Oh, Waverly. Oh, babygirl. Oh, _ sweetie_.”

*******

It’s an hour later, and they are swaddled up together close on the porch, outside. Wynonna hasn’t let her protective arm drop from Waverly’s shoulders, except for two trips: the first to fetch a glass of whiskey, the second to fetch the bottle.

Waverly hasn’t cried in Wynonna’s arms like that since - God, since when? She’d wept every time Wynonna had been taken away, even towards the end when she hated the tears almost as much as she hated the separation. But she’d stopped letting her sister console her on, what, the second, the third stint in juvie? Whenever it was that Waverly had started to conceive these incidents as much as about being left, as about Wynonna being taken.

But the stormy waves of grief washing through her were so strong these days they had crashed right over even her resolve, and once they had, the pain she'd been trying to contain had burst out with it, all at once, primal and messy and uncontrollable.

Her throat feels raw. She thinks she remembers screaming, raging at herself and the impossible situation she’d put herself in, beating her fists first against her knees, then her sister’s chest. Wynonna had simply taken the first few blows, but then had grabbed Waverly’s balled hands, and pulled them tight between them, stilling them; then pulling Waverly close again, kissing them, kissing Waverly’s forehead. Wrapping her up in big sister constraints and comfort.

And in letting the storm finally rage, Waverly thinks she might have also let it blow itself out. For now, anyhow. And the whiskey, two generous slugs on a stomach recently too sick and tight for food, has had its own calming effect too. It’s swaddled her feelings in just enough scratchy raw cotton fuzz that she can just about still see them, poke at them, but is no longer drowning in them.

“Okay. That’a girl, Wave.”

Wynonna has been murmuring comforting nonsense words into her hair, these past five minutes. Waverly’s yet to respond.

“You’ll be alright, Wave. It’ll be okay. Okay? Biggest sister says so. Alright?”

Waverly’s first acknowledgement of her sister’s words is a big, shuddering sniff. And a wipe at her nose, then eyes, and a fleeting look up, with a near-successful attempt at a shaky smile.

“Heeey. Looks who’s back! You feeling better now, baby girl?”

More of a grimace, than a smile, maybe.

“I'm - no. I'm not great. I’m sorry.”

“Hey hey. No need for sorry.”

“Still.”

“Shh. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

They sit for a little bit, Wynonna sitting back enough to take a sip of her own drink, arm still slung loosely around her sister’s shoulders. Raising her hand once to half-ruffle, half-stroke her hair.

“This is about what I think it is, isn’t it, Wave?”

The smallest of nods.

“Yeah. You - " Wynonna clears her throat. She’s cautious. “You never really explained what happened, baby girl. I mean, I know what you said before isn’t true…”

A shake of the head, now. And Waverly can feel tears threaten again, feel her throat closing up, so she forces the confession out before she loses the ability to speak completely. 

“She kept getting hurt. But she wouldn't stay out of it. She wouldn't let us be. And - the doctor said if she had another head injury - ”

Words for once fail Waverly, so she just turns to Wynonna, and with eyes pleading for understanding, and lips pressed in a thin, tense line, relies on their sisterly understanding to communicate the rest of it.

There's a second's stunned silence, before Wynonna puts it into words for her.

“You’re kidding. Please tell me you’re kidding. You broke up with her to _protect_ her? There's - fuck Waverly, there's like a hundred other ways we could have done that! Waverly Earp, you look at me? Ohhhh, Jesus God on a dump truck Waverly, you have got to be kidding me?"

And Waverly can’t hold back the guilt and relief of finally opening up, and just collapses again into Wynonna’s chest, who holds her tight, and murmurs softly into her hair. “You idiot. You absolute, complete, self-sacrificing, Son-of-a-goddamned-Earp, _ idiot _...”

* * *

Waverly waits for Nicole on the front porch of her house.

It’s late, and the night is so quiet and still, Waverly feels like Purgatory has finally earned its name. She feels like she's wandered into some sort of twilight; the haunted afterlife of a town that used to be full of life, and love, and laughter.

Nicole’s not at home. She doesn't know where she is. She knows her shift has finished at work because she got Wynonna to call in some bullshit call, to check. So where is she?

A panicking voice in her tells her that Nicole must have finally gone this time. Packed her bags and gone and left her completely, walked out of town just as easily as she'd walked into the town and her life, in Shorty's that day. Just when Waverly had worked out what an awful mistake she’d made.

She's lost deep in this worry, and her anxious musings, and so it seems sudden when she finally hears footsteps. They're closer than she was ready for, just the quiet scuff of trainers on sidewalk; and a mercurial rush of sudden panic almost has her turn tail and run. But she chances a quick look up, and though all she can see is the dark outline of a person walking tall and steady down that road, her heart leaps into her mouth, because she’d recognise that frame, that walk anywhere. It's _her_, oh god, it's her, it's here, it's time... 

She bows her head to try to regain her composure, forgetting instantly the speech she'd practiced on the way over, her heart hammering, trying to breathe steady, not looking up, not looking even as she hears Nicole get to the front gate. She registers the sounds of Nicole coming through it, the latch click back down on it, quietly. Like Nicole is hesitating too.

The footsteps approach closer.

Waverly looks up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who've read it - yes, this is the lead-up to the events in Ghosts. (Which, by the way, don't get retold here. I was going to, from Waverly's POV, but...doesn't feel right, for this one. You'll get your emotional love scene, don't worry - but later, and with very different emotions.)
> 
> For those of you who haven't - you might be interested to check that one out at some stage. But it's a different, and very specific mood to this one, so is definitely a different work. Not sure it works as an interim chapter to this one - but see what you think.
> 
> (Oh - side note. Waverly's little moment of lesbo/biphobia there Ain't Great. I know. But - speaking as someone who struggles mightily with internalised homophobia - these things can lurk inside of you, even when you know they shouldn't. And it's when you're most down when they come out to getcha.)


	3. Connection, Reconnection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Waverly and Nicole _talk_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes talking about how your own shit has fucked up your relationship is so difficult, the only place you can actually manage to do that, is from outside of it.
> 
> AKA - here be processing, fellas!

Much, much later.

A dimly lit room, and naked trembling bodies, and creased, damp sheets.

In the immediate aftermath they'd clung onto each other, tight, wordlessly bathing in their own and each other's comedown from the sex, and the emotion of it all. Nicole’s sobs had slowed and eventually stopped, and seemingly only then conscious of her position laid full length on top of Waverly, had tried to roll off of her. But Waverly had rolled right with her, leaving them in an awkward embrace, side by side and facing each other, both trying to cling on as close as they could, whilst both avoiding each other’s eyes.

Eventually Nicole had disengaged completely, and got up. Waverly had shuffled under the covers and watched Nicole nervously as she pulled off the bra that had somehow stayed on throughout, undone and stepped out of the harness, then gone to her dresser. Pulled out and put on clean underwear, a t-shirt for herself; then retrieved another and handed it to Waverly without comment, still not properly meeting her eye.

She climbed back into bed, and then curled slowly back into Waverly, resting her head on Waverly's shoulder, slipping an arm around her waist.

And Waverly bit her lip, and put her own arms around her, and closed her eyes, and just held Nicole.

The moment felt fragile. Like the slightest movement on either of their parts would fracture it, this precious cut glass moment of peace, fracturing again into a thousand piercing shards.

So she just lay, and held a silent and withdrawn Nicole, and thought about what had just happened.

She hadn't meant to kiss her. She hadn't meant any of what followed. She had had her full speech worked out; an explanation, an apology, and then an exit strategy. She was going to leave Nicole with all that, then walk away, give her the time and the space to consider her words.

But when she'd first looked up, she'd seen in Nicole the wounded fear of a cornered animal shade into worry and care the moment their eyes met. And - did she imagine the flash of want there too? Or was that all her, was it all her projecting her own need as she'd reached for Nicole?

There was no projection in the way Nicole had kissed her back. Oh, no, there was no way on earth that could have been imagined. She can still feel the ghost of Nicole's hands on her, all over her, the way Nicole had grasped at her, the way she'd steered them to her bed, so focussed and intent with desire she'd seemed almost, _almost_, out of control. The way she'd gasped when they'd first laid, body to bare body like that...

It had been amazing. It had been incredible. She'd forgotten how incredible they were together - no, of course not. How could she forget something like that? Like _them_? Not forgotten then. But - something like what they had created with each other this night was not a thing that could ever truly be remembered, only lived in its own, wild, soaring moment.

Because the way she'd felt when Nicole had held her, and kissed her, and made love to her...

God.

It had been something incandescent. But - beautiful though it had been, incredible as Waverly had felt, there had definitely been something - what? Something not quite them, about it?

_Think about it, Waverly. You're so smart? Work it out._

She'd wanted to look after Nicole, so, so much. But Nicole seemingly couldn't...perhaps Waverly should have stopped them both, then. But she felt so much need for it, for Nicole to have her, for Nicole to just take her, and - 

Right. That was exactly it. She'd wanted Nicole to _take_ her - and she had. And in her taking, Waverly herself had taken what she had needed from her - the bodily confirmation that Nicole still wanted her, proof of it in their slick skin and their hammering hearts and the desperate, helpless way Nicole had kissed her, thrust into her...

The act itself, the outcome, sure was no different to what they'd done so many times before.

But before...right. That was it. Before it had always been about giving_._

Nicole's head was a little heavy on her shoulder. A little sore actually: this a reverse of their usual position. Waverly almost wanted to smile at the fact that they didn't fit quite so well that way around.

She shifted her arms, shifted Nicole a little closer onto to her. Felt Nicole go with that, but felt equally, a strange hesitation and slowness in her movements. It felt so foreign to her.

"Nicole?"

"I'm okay."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

The tenderness she feels for this broken version of Nicole floods and fills Waverly. She’s so full of this feeling, swelling so hard in her heart, it almost hurts. 

She presses a kiss to the top of Nicole's head. "Promise?" she whispers.

And understands she's pushing too hard, too fast again, when there's no response.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to ask that. It's okay. I'm sorry. It's okay, you don't have to be okay."

Because there's still that sadness, hanging in the air.

The question she'd asked is hanging, unanswered, too. And Waverly tries her hardest not to ask, tries her absolute damndest not to go there. But just like before, when her desire had laid her truth wide open, the need and fear and anxiety she's feeling has her speak, despite herself. 

"I...I didn't mean to ask you that question. You know. Earlier. But - but - since I asked - Nicole - is there an answer?"

Her voice sounds, even to herself small, and tremulous, rising with the desperation of it. _ Please_, she thinks. _ Please_.

Nicole pulls away from her then, and hits her square in the eye with a searing, wounded look. And Waverly almost flinches at the bluntness of Nicole's tone.

"Will I take you back?"

Waverly bites her lip. Frightened, nods.

Nicole holds her gaze, two, three, seconds. Then sighs, and for the first time falls away from her, lying on her back.

“Why did you break up with me, Waverly?”

Waverly mirrors her position, laying on her back too, looking up through the dimness of the room, at the ugly plaster detailing above. She sighs.

“Haven't you guessed?”

“I've guessed a lot of things, Wave. I've thought about it a lot. You haven't given me any choice but to work it all out myself.”

Waverly shakes her head, as if she could shake away the fact of all the pain she'd caused the woman she loved. The myriad ways in which she'd wounded her.

“To protect you. To stop you from getting hurt.” she whispers, into the night.

“Right.” 

The bitter confirmation of that hangs, heavily, in the dark room for a moment, before Nicole goes on.

“You broke up with me to protect me. Without talking to me about it. Without explaining it. Without - God, Wave. Without understanding that that’s not entirely your _ choice_.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You’re right - I - I was just so scared. All the time. I was terrified of losing you. But I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

Waverly’s linguistic abilities have seemingly left her, she bitterly thinks. _I’m sorry_ is just so ridiculously inadequate to convey just how much she wishes she could take it all back. 

Not knowing if it's the right thing to do, terrified it's wrong, but unable to stop herself, she nudges a hand over to Nicole's, just brushing the back of her hand with her fingers. And nearly cries with relief when, after a seconds hesitation, she feels Nicole's hand turn, and grasp hers, and their fingers tangle, and interlock.

That's something. And so she just waits, looking up at the ceiling, waiting to see if Nicole is going to break her heart after all.

"I love you, Waverly. I do."

Waverly stays silent, stays still. Because how could those beautiful words be filled with so much sadness and hurt?

"But?"

A sigh. Then Nicole shifts a little, and then looks over.

"Do you remember when we first met? God, I fell for you so fast."

Nicole laughs, then; softly, and the look held in her eyes now: rueful, but full of that sadness, like a memory of love.

Waverly, absurdly, realises she's welling up. She wipes the gathering tears away, and just nods, encouraging Nicole to go on.

"Do you remember what it felt like?"

Of course she did. It had felt like...something primal, something irresistible - but something natural too. Like swimming through the noise and thunder of a waterfall, enveloped by the flood of it, and then finding herself on the other side, suddenly alone with Nicole in a place of tranquility and quiet. The rest of the world held safely on the other side of the roaring waters, the two of them together in a place that was only theirs.

She remembers the stolen looks back then, those precious secret moments together before anyone else knew, the _ warmth _ of it all. Waverly's heart swelling each time they met, Nicole's cocky but kind smiles, coaxing out her own shy, excited ones in reply.

She can't speak through the lump in her throat. Nicole looks at her, carefully. Then goes on.

"It was the most beautiful experience of my life. I was just overwhelmed by you, Wave."

Waverly feels Nicole's hand squeeze hers in reassurance, not understanding why until she realises her vision is swimming again, those damned tears forming and now falling, despite her best efforts that this conversation be for Nicole, for once. She sees through the haze Nicole roll slowly back onto her back. And grows scared, again.

It's quiet, a long, long time.

"I fell just so completely in love with you, Wave. But it was so _fast_. Before I knew it there were demons, and Black Badge, and - " Nicole actually laughs - "And your sister. Walking in on us every two minutes. And you were in your first relationship with a woman, and we never really talked about that. We never even got a chance to _ date _ \- we were just so new, and it was all moving so fast, and - "

Another sigh, heavier this time, and Nicole pushes her hands through her tangled hair. Frustrated.

"And I never chose any of it."

Waverly's heart, so long on the precipice, now feels like it's teetering over to start the slow fall towards the long, long drop below.

"I came to Purgatory to get away from drama, Wave. From Shae, and my parents, and all of that, and just to concentrate on myself, and my career. A nice, simple, straightforward life in a nice, quiet, simple town."

Even Waverly has to smile at the irony of that. She sniffs, and wipes her eyes; squeezes Nicole's hand this time in sympathy.

"Instead I find a murder rate that puts the big city to shame, which later turns out to be because there’s honest to god demons running around the place? And secret government agencies, and a girl with a magic gun - and her sister - "

Here Nicole turns again, and meets Waverly's eye.

"The sweetest, smartest, most beautiful, frustrating, wonderful girl I'd ever met. And it all just - swept me away."

She falls back again. And summarises, mildly.

"And I never chose any of it. I'm not saying I'm not still going to. I think I just - just need to make sure that it's my choice."

* * *

_Wednesday 12.02_

_Hey, Nicole. I'm popping over the station, and I was going to get some coffees for the gang. Do you want me to bring you anything? Just whilst I'm there, I mean!_

_Wednesday 12.05_

_Sorry Wave busy now_

_Wednesday 12.08_

_Oh okie dokey! No problem!_

_Wednesday 12.19_

_I'm sorry. I hope you don't think I was pressuring you into seeing me. I really did just wonder if you wanted a coffee. I'm really sorry._

_Wednesday 16.35_

_Hey - no I'm sorry! Coffee would've been great - but I was about to start a briefing! I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be short with you._

_Wednesday 16.37_

_Oh! Oh, okay. Phew! I thought I'd over-stepped. 🥺_

_Wednesday 16.42_

_No - it was a really nice thought. Thank you, Waves._

_Wednesday 16.44_

_😊_ _No problemo!_

_Wednesday 17.03_

_Another time, maybe?_

_Wednesday 17.04_

_☺️😄😉 Count on it!_

_Friday 14.15_

_Hey there. Don't answer if you're busy! But if you're not - I'm doing another coffee run. And donuts! Wynonna getting on my last nerve. You want?_

_Friday 14.20_

_Ohh, I'd kill for a proper coffee. Been a day!_

_Friday 14.21_

_Cappuccino? 😉_

_Friday 14.22_

_Yes please! Thanks, Waves._

_Friday 14.23_

_ 😊😊 See you in two secs, then! 😊_

_Friday 14.24_

_😊_

_*******_

_Sunday 10.17_

_Waves - I just got to work and seeing the overnight reports - was that you guys? Are you okay? I'm sorry to disturb you if it wasn't, but if it was, can you give me a call?_

_Sunday 11.08_

_Sorry, I know we just rung off. I just wanted to say thanks, again. For still caring about us, I mean. 🥰_

_Sunday 11.10_

_It was really great talking to you, Nicole._

_xx_

_Sunday 11.11_

_Yeah. It really really was._

_xxx_

_Wednesday 13.55_

_You're back at work today, right? Coffee?_

_Wednesday 13.56_

_You're the best 😊_

_Wednesday 13.57_

_😊😊😊♥️_

_Thursday 12.05_

_There's a little something in the break room for you all. (And something just for you 😉) When you finally drag Wynonna in!_

_Thursday 14.35_

_Ooooh! THANK YOU!! 😃🤩🤗😘_

_Friday 11.16_

_☕🍩?_

_Friday 11.18_

_👍😊_

_Friday 20.54_

_Hey Wave. So. I just wondered - and completely understand if you don't want to. Or not yet. Or if you're just too busy with everything. But just wondered if you wanted to go out for a drink some time? With me, I mean?_

_Friday 20.55_

_YES 😃😃😃😃😃😃😃😃_

_Friday 20.57 _

_Yes please! That would be lovely._

_Friday 20.58_

_Can I call you? To work out when we're free? 😃_

* * *

Between Earp curse chaos and Nicole's shifts, it's over a week later before they finally manage to go out for that drink.

Their _date_, Waverly thinks. Their first proper date, like ever, Waverly muses, as she glares into the mirror, brushing her hair out into a carefully planned do. It should, if she could get it right, look just perfectly like the gentle waves and long shiny loose strands just fell carelessly and artfully together just so.

It was an _almighty_ pain to get right. 

But worth it - it would after all compliment the mood of the rest of her outfit, she thinks; wryly eyeing herself in the mirror in oh-so-casual jeans (newly purchased today) and simple cornflower blue shirt (carefully pressed, then tossed in the air and lightly crumpled, just to take the edge off).

Finally ready, she heads downstairs. Nicole is due to pick her up any minute, and she can't believe just how nervous she is. Her stomach is aflutter, and her heart is in her mouth, and she can't settle or sit still.

She's unable to keep a happy and nervous smile keep breaking across her face, thinking again and again that she's waiting for Nicole to collect her for their _date_, as she walks around the homestead, absently fluffing pillows and picking up ornaments, fussing with their alignment, and then putting them back down again in the exact same place.

When she hears a car pull up outside, she straightens bolt upright, as if she's been caught red-handed.

Nicole knocks at the door, and Waverly's already there to open it, coat and boots already on, ready to go and practically thrumming with excitement. But all that is nothing compared to how she feels when the door opens and she sees Nicole stood the other side, wearing her own dark blue jeans, a black button down shirt, and, best of all, a puppyish, hopeful smile.

And when she brings out from behind her back, with an embarrassed and bashful flourish, a single red rose?

Waverly thinks the riot of joy and emotion might be the most wonderful feeling she's felt in her life.

*******

They head off first for that drink, and then on to a meal. Nothing too fancy tonight, both of them nervous of putting too much pressure on this first evening together, so they settle for the booth seats in the better of Purgatory's two diners. A slightly over-done steak for Nicole, and something that was once a vegetarian dish, but with the cheese taken out, was more of an excuse of limp vegetables for Waverly.

But no matter. They're not there for the food, anyhow. And, so right from the start and their under-their-breath and twinkle eyed teasing of Purgatory's unadventurous menus, it’s just so _easy_.

Waverly is almost overcome with relief to find that it's just the same as it ever was, between them. Waverly is of course chatty with the nerves at the beginning, and despite cringing at herself for doing it, still hogs the early conversation. But finds herself slowly calmed by Nicole, just as she always had. Something about the way Nicole listens to her, in that way that no-one else has ever really listened to her before: quiet and respectful and, genuinely, honestly, interested.

And with her nerves calmed, and the pressure of speech lessened, she backs off, and listens to Nicole in turn. She relishes the chance to steal looks at Nicole whilst she's talking, animated and earnest and - well she's just _so_ pretty when she smiles.

Waverly can feel herself smiling back, too - and feels almost giddy when she actually makes Nicole laugh. Deliberately teasing out those not-quite-so-professional opinions on Purgatory townsfolk that Waverly remembers discovering with wicked delight that Nicole held, and would let out, for her ears only. That funny and sarcastic and every-so-slightly grumpy side of her that was just as much her Nicole as was the kind, loyal and considerate person she was at the exact same time.

But, Waverly realises - of course, it is different, to when they were very first getting to know each other.

Because they _ know_, now. When Nicole asks after Wynonna, Waverly doesn’t have to hide behind a nervous smile, and prevaricate, and lie through her teeth about the source of Wynonna’s past and present troubles.

Instead she flat out tells Nicole that she’s worried about her. With the increasing efficiency of their revenant hunting operation, Wynonna is getting smoother and slicker with the kills - but with each one, seems to be sliding more and more into something like a depression. Waverly recounts to Nicole how Wynonna's life is a non-stop circle of sleeping in, coffee, getting up, plotting a kill, going out, killing, coming back, drinking, staying up as late she can to avoid the new day rolling round again, and then sleeping in again.

She recounts how when it’s not going well, her sister's moods are foul and black, and even her gallows humour drops away to leave only pure bitterness. And even when things do go to plan, Wynonna doesn’t seem to take any satisfaction from it. It seems to hurt her almost as much when they put a revenant down, as when they fail to.

And just for Waverly to be able to talk to someone about this, someone who understands? That’s comfort enough. But for it to be Nicole, for Nicole to reach over, and to take a hand, and squeeze it. To duck her head, and smile a half-smile of, I know, and I’m sorry, and I’m here for you.

It feels so good.

“It’s understandable she’s struggling, Wave. It’s an awful thing your sister has to do. I can’t imagine anyone being okay with it. I think it’s to her credit that she is struggling, actually.”

“Yeah? How so?”

“Well. Okay, so don’t take this the wrong way. But I found it pretty hard myself, to be honest. Especially at first.”

Waverly sips her coffee, looking inquisitively over into Nicole’s deep brown eyes.

“I - I keep on saying we need to be honest, don’t I? So I guess I’ll start...do you remember that time Wynonna took me out and got me drunk?”

Waverly giggles. “Which time?”

A grin back. “That’s a fair question - when we thought Alice might have had a revenant for a father?”

Waverly sobers. _Oh_.

“Yes. Yeah, I remember that.”

Nicole looks a little guilty, like she's not sure how to proceed.

So Waverly helps her out. “You weren’t wild about killing him, were you?”

“Nope. No, I wasn’t. In my line - we leave judgement for the judges. But this was - like a straight execution. No judge, no jury; just Peacemaker."

Waverly just nods, a long, slow nod. She’s an Earp though, and if they weren't born blunt, they at least had it trained into them. “That’s exactly what it was, Nicole. That's exactly what all this is.” She sighs. “I was angry at you too, you know.”

“I know. I knew.”

“It’s what we do. It’s what she does. But - okay, I think it wasn’t just you I was angry at. I mean you were there, and so…” She takes another sip of her coffee, thinking, trying to sort through the tangle of thoughts in her head.

“I guess I find it hard, too. But it wasn’t until I saw it through someone else’s eyes, that I realised just how crazy it all was. So it was like I was angry at you for showing me that? And, you know, I worry about Wynonna. And you were there, and you’re so strong, and I guess…”

Something clear suddenly swims up from the depths of the guilt she’d been plumbing, these past months.

“You were always there to lean on. And I think I took that for granted. I was so scared of driving Wynonna away, and so I never wanted to say anything to her. But _you_ \- whatever I said, however much of a brat I was, you were always just still there.”

Waverly couldn’t quite work out what the look Nicole was giving her meant.

“Of course I was still there for you. That’s what girlfriends are for. Even when - ” Nicole breaks off, and smiles disarmingly, to soften the blow, “okay, even when you - or I - are being maybe just a little tiny smidge bratty.”

Waverly acknowledges this with a rueful raise of her eyebrows, and a small tip of her coffee cup, as if in toast to this truth.

“And - I’m still here for you. Whatever happens with us, Wave. I’m still here for you, and I - I think I always will be. You know? But you have to _ talk _ to me. You have to share this stuff with me. If you want me to be - if we’re going to work, you have _ got _ to trust me. Okay?”

Waverly’s got a lump in her throat. So she just nods a small, chagrined, nod.

"I know. It's just so hard, Nicole."

She looks up, nervous. Encouraged to see Nicole waiting, patiently, for her to elaborate.

"I've hidden this stuff my whole life. I've hidden - god, I've hidden everything. Who I am. Who I want to be. What really goes on here in Purgatory. And then you - you came, and it was like I _finally_ started opening up. But it's hard, Nicole. It's a long, long habit to start to break."

“I get that, Waves. And I know you're trying. All I'm asking, is that you keep on trying. And hey - I do know I can be a little bit - overbearing, too, sometimes?"

Waverly tilts her head to one side. "Weell..."

"It's just - I've always stepped up, Waves. Always. No-one's ever needed to ask me first, I've always just done it. And, okay, yeah, I guess sometimes I can get a little bit resentful that I always have to do that, and it's doubly hard because you guys won't let me in, and you don't ask for help, so I have to find out what's going on myself first, before I can help. Then when I do you're mad at me - I mean, would it _kill_ Wynonna to show a little appreciation from time to time? When I'm putting my life on the line for her, and all I get is some wise-crack about - "

"What do you mean, always? You've 'always had to step up'?" Waverly interrupts.

Nicole frowns, thrown off the increasing pace and frustration of her speech.

"Erm. Just - always?"

"Like, when you were a kid? You used to help out a lot, round the house. That's right, isn't it?"

Nicole rolls her eyes. "Yeah. I mean, someone had to. If I wasn't cleaning the place up, no-one would. If I didn't buy us fruit, and fresh vegetables, we'd have lived on peanut butter on toast. And, look, it's okay, I volunteered to do that, for all of us. They didn't make me. They weren't abusive or anything. I know a lot of kids had it worse. But, they could have said thanks. Is all."

Nicole's stirring her nearly empty, cold coffee, with precise, repetitive movements. Waverly watches her, lets the moment spool open a second. Enough to create the difference, and space she needs for what she's to say next. Nonetheless, she softens her voice as much as she can.

"I'm not your parents, Nicole. None of us are."

"What?" Nicole's head jerks up, and she's staring at Waverly. Genuinely confused, and maybe, just the tiniest hint annoyed.

"Myself & Wynonna. We're not your mum and dad."

"What do you - of course you're not - I don't get - _what?_"

"You are right to resent your parents, sweetie. They sound like absolute shit-tickets. And it's okay to feel bad about what you went through. It _wasn't_ okay, okay? And it is okay to resent the fact you had to look after yourself, when they should have been there for you. You were just a child, Nicole. You didn't have any other choice but to do what you did, huh?"

Nicole's looking back at her, defensive, unsure, and more than a little hurt. Waverly hesitates for a second. She wants to protect Nicole from what she's about to accuse her of.

But no. It's not about protection, tonight. It's about truth.

"But you're an adult now - and you do have a choice about this, Nicole."

Waverly sees Nicole start to respond, but talks on.

"You _do_. You don't have to get involved with the curse stuff - "

This time Nicole does interrupt, voice a little raised.

"Oh, come on Waverly, it's not just you guys it affects, you know? It's my civilians that - "

"Okay, okay - yes, you're right," Waverly soothes. "We've got to involve you as far as it affects police business, I know - "

" - and it's _you_, and you're my girlfriend - "

Waverly ignores the slip of Nicole's tongue, but feels a rush of warmth even as she talks over her again. "And I know that too, of course I've got to be better at telling you what's going on with me - but beyond that - I mean it - you _don't_ have to get involved. And if you do - if you choose to - that's _your_ choice, okay? You can't resent me and Wy for that. That's not fair on us."

Nicole is looking back at her, frowning, obviously trying to process what she's just heard. Waverly waits, just holding her gaze, trying to work out what's going on in Nicole's head.

The moment hangs, until Nicole takes a deep breath, passes a hand over her eyes, and sits back in the booth, a little heavily. This time when her hand drops, she looks up at Waverly, there's something like recognition dawning in her eyes.

"Okay. Wow. I mean - okay. Wow."

Waverly gives her a second, before pressing on.

"And listen. We don't exclude you because we don't care about you, Nicole. When we've left you out it's because we _do_ care about you. Wynonna does too, you know? All that teasing - it's because she feels guilty about putting you in danger. She wouldn't wish this on anybody, let alone her best friend."

"Best might be pushing it..." Nicole mumbles, but through the hint of a smile.

"And I? Well - I - I love you. Still. Always. And that scares me, more than anything. More than a thousand revenants ever could. Because I can't lose you, Nicole. I just can't. You know - "

She breaks off, getting emotional. Nicole leans back forward again, and takes her hand and squeezes it; and this gives her the strength to give a small sad smile to Nicole, and go on. She looks straight into the eyes of the woman sitting opposite her, knowing this is what it all really comes down to.

"I really thought I could do it, you know. I've lost so many people, Nicole. I thought I could stand to lose one more. But - these past months - I don't - I don't think I can live without you. Not any more. So I _need_ to find a way to keep you safe, okay?"

They look at each other, the longest time. A plead, a question; a confession, love.

Nicole squeezes her hand again.

"Okay. I get that; I do. And I heard everything you said about - I mean. Wow. I'm going to have to do some thinking about all that. But, look Waves - whatever the reasons for it, keeping me in the dark about this stuff just isn't the best tactics for keeping us all safe, okay?"

"I know. I know. I'm sorry. I know I need to talk to you. But that works both ways, love." Waverly feels herself blushing at the accidental endearment, and hurries on to cover her path. “So you need to talk to me, too. If you’re going to swoop in and try to save us at the last minute anyway - well, you may as well be with us in the planning. So Dolls can work out a place for you, and Wynonna can stop winding me up with comments about part-time cops, and you can get the full briefing. I know you’ve got your hands full with the Sheriff’s department, but we’ve - we've_ got _ to work something out.”

Nicole’s serious look softens, and just the corner of one side of her mouth turns up. The start of a smile. 

Waverly feels her own smile break over her face like the dawn of a new day, and something settles, and opens, in her chest. Something that feels like hope.

“We’ve got to work something out, huh?”

*******

Late, late, late. A decamping to Shorty’s for one last drink whilst the bar is swept around them, a later idle drive taking the long way home, under the stars. The crystal of the sky in these first days of frost combining with the feeling of weightlessness after the revelations of their earlier conversation, and it's left them both breathless; talking, and laughing; just missing the turn of each other’s head, just catching the edge of each other's lingering looks.

Feeling for all the world like there was some sort of a possibility alive on this mundane winter's night. Like this town that normalcy forgot could produce something special for once; that instead of demons around the bend of the long, dark road, they had a chance, just maybe, of stumbling upon a miracle.

Nicole pulls up at the Homestead, and Waverly notes with nervous delight that she’s getting out of the car, too.

She’s all fluttering nerves, in fact, as Nicole walks her all the way up to the porch steps. She wants to invite Nicole inside, of course she does. But she’s not sure what the etiquette is, on this the strangest of first dates.

So when they’ve climbed the porch steps, she stops, and turns to face Nicole.

“I had a really great night, Nicole. Thank you.”

“Me too.”

They’re smiling, beaming at each other, really. Nicole’s eyes are shining with happiness, and yes, maybe with, maybe with...

“So then.” Waverly prompts. Her heart is hammering. God, she feels like a teenager again.

“So then.”

A coyote howls and yips in the distance, and both turn their heads in that direction, unseeing through the still black night.

And then they turn back together, and Nicole smiles again, a soft, beautiful smile, and takes a half step closer, and and leans down to take just one of Waverly's hands. Waverly is rooted in place, gazing up at her in an almost disbelieving hope, but then that last doubt leaves her, leaves her just completely open to this overpowering need, because Nicole's closing her eyes as she bends to close the final distance, and she, finally, perfectly, gently, kisses Waverly. Just a simple, short, press of their lips, lingering just a second, pressing again once more quick and tender and with a hint of firmness as a promise of, one day, again. One day, more.

Nicole pulls back, squeezing the hand she holds one more time, and then dropping it.

Waverly’s eyes are still closed. Her lips are tingling, and a flood of happiness and desire washes through her, almost loosening her tether to this earth. _Yes_, her body sings. _Yes_, her heart beats. _Yes_, rushes the echo of everything in their past, and the hope of everything in their future. _Yes_.

Her eyes flutter open, and Nicole is stood back a pace now, her own blissed-out, slightly stunned look making her look younger, somehow. Almost girlish.

“Okay. Okay. So. I’ll call you?”

Waverly just smiles, and nods, as Nicole turns, and walks down the stairs. Takes a step and holds onto the corner beam at the railings, to steady and ground her, as Nicole crunches over the hoar frost to her car, looking tall and proud and more than a little like she’s walking on air.

Just before Nicole gets in the car, she turns and nods her final farewell to Waverly, wearing a smile so radiant Waverly can see it, even from here.

Waverly feels her own hand lift of its own accord, and give a simple, shy wave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick shout out to Heck (@heckthewakeful on the twits) for contributing substantially to my thinking on this chapter. Particularly some observations and discussions on the pathologies of the Wayhaught relationship that a) made a collosal amount of sense, and so have ended up being part of the pivotal conversation here, and b) inadvertently and completely co-incidentally led to an enormous penny-drop moment in how I understand my own personal life (which may also have actually saved my marriage in the process...)
> 
> Earpers, eh? 💙
> 
> Thanks, dude.


	4. Dance with your partner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Waverly and Nicole have an unusual second date.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter also doubles as my sneaky shout-out to the magnificent slew of Yeehaw Wayhaught that's out there at the moment.
> 
> Oh. I should probably mention things might get somewhat mature later, too. Depends how their date goes, I guess!

_Tuesday 07.54_

_I had such a great time_ _ last night. Thank you, Waves._

_Tuesday 07.55_

😊🥰😊🥰😊_ Me too._

_07.57_

_I’d missed you so so much. I’d missed us. _💜💖💕

_07.58_

😊😊😊

_07.59_

❤️❤️❤️

* * *

Waverly tells Nicole it's her turn to arrange next time. And so for their second date, Waverly lines up for Nicole just what every overworked Sheriff in Purgatory wants - a full day's hard work on a precious Saturday off.

It had taken a week of careful logical persuasion, combined with her very best doe-eyed begging, but Dolls and Wynonna had finally agreed to her request: a full briefing for Nicole on all matters supernatural. To bring her up to speed with all that was going on, and work with her on a joint strategy with Purgatory SD to tackle it all.

They’d arranged it for the Homestead, knowing it was all-too easy for Nicole to get pulled into Sheriff’s business at the station. ('All the more reason we shouldn’t be relying on her. She needs to take those questions.' Wynonna had argued. 'All the more reason we need her inside - how often do her answers have implications for our cases?'Waverly had countered.)

And so come Saturday came a long long day of intense work for all of them. A day full of dog-eared yellowing papers and dusty manila files and old mildewy books; all sprouting bright sticky notes in Waverly's complex colour coded reference system, piled in stacks over every available surface at the Homestead.

A full day of squinting at spidery copperplate ink scrawls on dated Earp family journals, of cross-referencing them to redacted police files and Dolls' elaborate BBD case notes. Of Nicole's frown of concentration staring down at grainy old photos, trying not to be distracted by Wynonna's sarcastic remarks; leaving it to Dolls and Waverly to sort through which of these were just bratty complaints, which genuine insights and suggestions.

A day of endless cups of coffee; practically all supplied by Waverly, clearing away the half-drunk mugs from before, and replacing them with fresh hot and steaming brews for all, those themselves then forgotten in turn amongst the questions and answers and debates on matters of interpretation, strategy and tactics.

Of course Waverly herself took the lead on large parts of the briefing. But her most indispensable role for the day was really that of mediator.

So that when Nicole or Dolls forgot for a moment that the world they were dealing with did not always lend itself to formality or procedure, she'd politely translate Wynonna's eye-rolls into a reasoned request for just a little bit of leeway for the heir's instincts and decision making. When Wynonna on the other hand got a little too punchy in her teasing of Nicole's methodological notes and planning, she'd step in to calm things down.

"Alright Wynonna, we all know you’ve got the biggest gun, no need to pull it out and wave it about" she said during one particularly tense difference of opinions. The off-colour humour diffusing the tension in a second with Wynonna cackling into her coffee, and Nicole and Dolls sharing the same long-suffering '_Earps'_ eye-rolls.

And Nicole? Well, it was all still strangely new between them. So very odd, finding a path through that. When she remembers how many hours she and Nicole had spent curled up together at the Homestead over the past year, bodies pressed together and limbs tangled carelessly in a mess of physical comfort and love - and now here they were together, tiptoeing around each other politely, again.

But of course, Waverly is still a creature of touch. So when she’d lean over Nicole, to put her coffee down, she’d without thinking lay a hand on Nicole’s shoulder. When they'd hit those tense moments, as well as the defusing comment she'd make to either Dolls or Wynonna, she'd also just lightly touch Nicole's hand, where it sat on the table, starting to ball into a frustrated fist. Just a touch, just for a moment, until she'd see it relax, and unfurl.

And when Nicole at one point hit on an oblique but inspired connection between a particularly troublesome revenant they’d been chasing, and a series of very peculiar unexplained SD cases, Waverly just couldn’t stop either the squeak of excitement, nor the reach of an arm around Nicole in a proud sideways squeeze of celebration and pride.

And she wasn't too clueless to see, too, Nicole’s response to these touches. With each a duck of her head, an intake of breath, and a quiet, private smile; before with an almost visible gathering of herself, Sheriff Nicole Haught would swim back up to take charge; and get on with business.

*******

  
Waverly hadn't just been working her persuasive magic on Black Badge the past week. No, she'd also somehow managed to get a concession from Nicole that to blow off steam at the end of the day, what could be better than wholehearted participation in Shorty’s Annual Line Dance Classic?

Wynonna gives them shit for their plans on and off throughout the day, Waverly batting the criticisms back unconcernedly, pointing out that someone who’s idea of a big effort date was putting down plates for their chinese takeaway didn’t really have a leg to stand on.

So when they finally put away the casework papers for the day, she and Nicole move upstairs to start getting ready. Wynonna waits until the clanking of ancient pipes that means the shower is running stops, then grabs a beer and wanders up after them, to step up up the teasing. Leaning on Waverly’s bedroom door, swigging from her bottle, and cheering _ yee-haws _ and _ spin-that-partner_, much to the consternation of Nicole who is shooting her daggers in the mirror while Waverly, still in a short gown and nowhere near started on her own outfit, pulls the last twists of Nicole’s hair into the tight french braid she hasn’t worn for the best part of a year.

Nicole’s sat with a new black Stetson in her lap, and is popping and unpopping the top two mother-of-pearl buttons of the red plaid shirt Waverly had got her for the occasion; looking appraisingly at her appearance in the mirror.

“Knock it off, Wynonna," Waverly mumbles through a mouth full of hairpins. "It’s going to be fun! Why don’t you come too? Can’t you just see Doc heel-digging his way around the dancefloor?” 

"You'd think, wouldn't you? 'Ahh cannot _abide_ by all that _hollering_ and _hootenanny_' " Wynonna drawls, in an exaggerated impression of Doc's accent. "But I'll come in with Dolls to drop you off. The opportunity to see Haught-stepper and her two left feet in action is just too good to pass up."

"Oh, easy to stand on the side and criticise - why _don't_ you join us, Wynonna? Too scared to be outdanced by this flatfoot over here?"

Waverly grins to herself, putting the last of the hairpins in place, securing tight the final wisps of Nicole's hair. In truth she's somewhat relishing the discomfort of both her sister and her date, now finally in each other’s company in a purely social capacity, and both obviously less happy with that than they had been all day in their work-based and therefore justified antagonism.

Theirs was a funny dynamic, but one that felt like family. _This_ felt like family; the three of them sharing the oddly intimate feel of preparing for a night out.

“Okay, you’re good, sweetie. Stand up, turn around, let me get a look at you - oh. Oh_._ _Honey_.”

“Close your mouth, Waverly,” Wynonna drily observes from the door. “You’re drooling.”

Waverly can feel herself blush. Nicole is looking down at her, a twinkle in her eye and smile broadening as she catches Waverly’s reaction to her completed look; putting the Stetson on with a bit more of a sweep of the arm that it really requires, and, oh, _hell_, dropping her a wink to go with it. 

Waverly bites her lip, and gamely tries, if fails, to downplay her compliment, looking away, blushing radiantly. “You just _know_ how gorgeous you are, don't you? Now. Can you take Wynonna downstairs? I can’t concentrate on my outfit when she’s hanging around and bugging me.”

“Take me downstairs? Take _me_ downstairs?! In my own house?”

Nicole laughs. She takes the hat off again to drop a quick kiss on the cheek to a rooted-to-the-spot Waverly, then walks over to Wynonna, grabs her by the elbow and wheels her round and out of the doorway towards the stairs.

“Come on, Earp. Get me a beer and I’ll let you tell me what you really think about my boots…”

*******

It’s over half an hour later when Waverly finally comes downstairs. Wynonna has got them both on the whiskeys by now, and they are amiably bickering at the kitchen table about who knows what, when Wynonna catches sight of something over Nicole’s shoulder.

She grins at Nicole, and with just a lift of her eyebrows by way of indication, lets Nicole know they’ve got company. “You might want to put your drink down, Sheriff Lindy-Haught,” she says, laughing into her own whiskey.

Nicole frowns, pettily refusing the advice as she turns in her seat. And then has to frantically grasp at the glass, because at what she saw, it had nearly slipped clean out of her hand.

Waverly was stood in front of her, wearing a shy and sly smile, her hair done up in some complicated eighties confection of curls and colour, suiting and balancing the hint more make-up than Waverly would normally go for. All that was enough to have Nicole stunned, but that wasn’t all there was, not by far.

Because there were also shorts so short they barely deserved the name, ripped stonewashed denim giving way to those perfect, toned legs; clad then from the knee down in white heeled cowboy boots, themselves bedecked in a frankly obscene quantity of rhinestone. Nicole swallowed, as she dragged her eyes back up Waverly’s body, up past the faux-snakeskin belt, skimming past with some difficulty the bared midriff, up to Waverly’s own plaid shirt - hers yellow and black and tied in front and so many buttons left undone that...

“I can see you staring, Haught.”

“I’ve got my back to you” Nicole responds, vaguely, her mouth dry.

“I can _ hear _ you staring, then.” Wynonna’s voice is a tease, and they both know it. But Wynonna wouldn’t be Wynonna if she didn’t do the big sister act from time to time. “Second date, baby girl? _ This _is how you dress on a second date? What exactly are you planning for the third?”

* * *

Shorty’s is a whirl of colour and noise, packed with drunken farmers and shop-workers and office clerks, all turned cowboy for the night. They're inhaling beer after beer, whilst wine-drunk women shriek their excitement at each other and their hapless men, pulling them into dances, dragging them through the steps. Whiskeys are drunk, and buffalo wings consumed, and Purgatory’s citizens get shiny and red-faced with happy exertion as up on stage a lanky streak of an MC with a drooping mustache, bolo tie, and a twinkle in his eyes calls them through the steps. Everyone bumping into each other, laughing, apologising, stepping back into place, and catching up, just in time to start the set all over again.

Waverly thinks it might well be the most fun she and Nicole have ever had together. 

Well, the most fun they can have in Shorty’s, anyhow. She beams at Nicole as they step in unison in another exaggerated strut, reminded then by the bloom of colour on Nicole's flushed neck of a warming encounter they'd shared in the store-room downstairs one time; a few months and another lifetime ago.

Okay, then - well, the most fun they can have in the _ main bar _ in Shorty’s.

Nicole is keeping pace with the dance, a little out of breath if not panting half as much as most of their neighbours are. The sleeves on her own shirt are rolled up as far as they’ll go, both the obligatory top button of her shirt, and a second too now resolutely undone...and Waverly can’t help but her eye be drawn there, to catch the shine of the bar lights on the perspiration clinging to the start of a curve of...

“I’m up here” Nicole drawls into her ear as they pass each other again in a complicated spin and turn.

Waverly's too happy, too tipsy on wine and the sheer joy of the evening to bring herself to feel guilty. So instead she looks back there once more, pointedly and deliberately this time, then at Nicole’s look of scandalised shock, lets her head fall back as she just laughs, and laughs, and laughs.

*******

Not long later, and it’s time for the couples’ dance part of the evening. Married men and their wives stand automatically together, whilst the uncoupled youth around them make those split second decisions on partners that could easily last them a lifetime.

There’s just a very short debate on how they should line up.

“So, are you going to be the boy, then?” Waverly asks, hands on hips, grinning cheekily up at Nicole.

“Oh, don’t you start. I used to get enough of that at the academy.” Nicole smiles, softening the eye-roll. “‘Are you the boy or the girl?’ I mean, honestly. I don’t know what part of ‘lesbian’ they didn't understand - ”

“Well, _ I’m _ not going to be the boy, am I?” counters Waverly, smile now growing teasingly indignant.

Nicole laughs, holds her hands up in surrender. “Okay, okay! So then - you’re over there?”

The dances in this section run a bit slower, and there’s a bit more opportunity for touch, and flirting. A swing here, a bump of hips there. The dance caller wasn’t born yesterday, and he knows his audience; half too drunk to maintain the pace of earlier, the other half more than happy to let the physical exertions of the evening lean and sway towards a different sort of physicality altogether.

And Waverly is trying not to be too overt, after her teasing glances earlier. But _holy_ crap, Nicole looks just _so_ good, dancing and stepping and taking an unexpected amount of joy in the simple twirls and steps of their movement. 

Fun looks good on her, Waverly muses. 

_Skin tight jeans and a half undone cowgirl shirt don’t look too shabby either_, another baser part of her supplies.

She's then taken a little by surprise by a momentary jealousy when the next dance involves swapping of partners. She sees the various girls and women in Purgatory, giggling a little at the idea of dancing with another woman - the Sheriff, no less! And notices with a combination of amusement and irritation a few of them even giving Nicole flirty looks. But then she’s reassured by Nicole, who's smiling and twirling the girls as the dance requires, but only courteous, polite. Her eyes flitting back to Waverly time and again to seek the reassurance, Waverly dropping her own winks of acknowledgement in return.

The jealousy fades, and an answering warmth raises in Waverly at that. Maybe, I haven’t lost her. Maybe, just maybe, she’s still mine, after all.

*******

And so to the final dance of the evening, a late, lazy sway to the mournful heartbroken song of a lonely frontier cowboy. The dance floor is half empty, most attendees having needed a seat long before now, and only a dedicated few still dotting the dancefloor area of the bar. Some beyond drunk and swaying, holding each up like heavyweight boxers in the final round. Some simple close holds, and idle turns, and dance steps forgotten in favour of touch, and low, intimate whispers.

Waverly is standing in Nicole’s arms, and has her own lying loosely on her tall partner’s shoulders. She’s gazing up at Nicole, just taking her in. Drinking in her face, still a little flushed, her eyes fallen easily shut, the softness of a half smile on her lips, watching Nicole evidently just letting herself feel the music and the moment.

Nicole’s hands are still respectful on her hips, just settled at her waist band. They’re close, bodies just about brushing as they turn and move; but there's a small distance there still, and Waverly feels it like an ocean. She doesn’t want to pressurise Nicole, but _god_, she just wants her. She wants to feel her body, on hers.

So a little nervous, but determined, she steps in, just a little closer. The gamble pays off, because she feels Nicole’s accept and lean into the closeness, her hands slipping a little further round her waist, and then thumbs raise and just gently caress the bare skin of her lower back. Waverly feels through the warming press of their bodies Nicole’s deep breath, and then as she lets it out, her eyes flicker open again, and look down into hers.

“Hey you.”

“Hey.”

Just smiles, and touch, and sway.

“You had a good night?”

They turn, slowly. Waverly doesn’t drop her eyes from Nicole’s, and hopes that she’s conveying everything she wants to with that look. Because words can’t do this feeling justice.

“The best. The _best_.”

Nicole just smiles, and lets her eyes drop shut again. Her head drops a little too, til they're dancing cheek to cheek, Waverly’s hands now crossed over behind Nicole’s neck, bringing them closer still.

“Nicole?”

“Mm?”

“Thank you for this. Thank you for taking it slow.”

The response is a squeeze at her waist, the hint of a nuzzle where their faces touch. _ It’s okay. Thanks to you, too_, she understands. But Waverly needs to say more. Needs to make Nicole understand what this all means to her.

“I feel like - " The whispered words get stuck in her throat. "I feel like I’m falling in love with you, Nicole. All over again.”

Nicole pulls back again, at that. And meets Waverly’s eyes, and there's love, and hope, and an open, honest vulnerability there, all mirrored in the emotion in Nicole's raw voice, as she gives her reply.

“I never stopped, Wave. I never once stopped falling in love with you.”

* * *

They're one of the last to get ready to leave, and the bar calls them a cab, and they give the office both their addresses, but in the dark in the back of the taxi, they just can’t relinquish the closeness of that touch, and their hands find each other first, and they lean together, and then their heads turn and nudge and tip, and then like it's the easiest, most inevitable thing in the world, their lips find each other; and soon after, senseless of anything except for how the growing kiss feels, so do their tongues. 

So it is that on the five minute journey they’re kissing each other properly again for the first time, deep and slow and serious, and so full of feeling, far too much to fit into the propriety and cramped back seat of a modest sedan. Such that the driver feels the need to stop the car outside Nicole’s house with force enough to make his point, and the two of them laugh guiltily under their breaths as they're forced to break the kiss. But they don’t _feel_ guilty at all, they don’t care one bit what the world thinks of them right now, all they can think about is the shine of each other’s eyes, the warmth of their breath, the feeling of sitting as close as they can, the communion of where their hands are still holding tight between them.

“Do you want to come in?” Nicole breathes to Waverly, not even beginning to move to leave the car.

“Yeah. Yes, I really really do. Are you sure, though, Nicole? I can go on - ?”

Nicole bites her lip. “I’m sure if you are?”

A solemn, excited nod in return.

The taxi driver clears his throat. He can’t possibly have heard their whispered exchange - but he’s a taxi driver. He can read the signs. “Final stop is it then, ladies? That’ll be 8 dollars please.”

Nicole gets out her wallet, and frowns at the contents. Waverly beats her to it, and hands a 20 dollar bill straight to the driver, not stopping for him to make change before pulling open the door, and pulling Nicole out of it.

“Thanks then! Sorry about the mix-up with the addresses! See you!”

Giggling, and hand in hand, they both run up the path to Nicole’s front door.

  
*******

Nicole is kissing her.

Nicole is holding her body, holding it close to hers, and her lips are touching hers. She’s soft now, no hurry now, not now they’re safe, in the quiet of each other’s company; the rest of the world shut out and banished, and Waverly’s whole world closing down to the feeling of Nicole’s touch, on her.

The way it feels to run her own fingers lightly around Nicole’s neck, the incredible dance that is the confluence and understanding of each other’s movements. Waverly rising on tiptoes, and Nicole holding her there; the feel of Nicole’s arms tightening instinctively at her waist, nearly raising her clean off the ground, and Waverly opens her mouth and they’re kissing wet and deep again. Nicole’s hot breaths when they have to break off for air, laughing at each other’s need, smiling into another kiss, and another, and another.

Waverly’s not sure if she’s ever been so turned on in her life. She feels like every nerve in her body is on fire, is just thrumming with need and desire, and Nicole has barely even touched her yet. But she wants to take this slow. Where’s the hurry? They’ve months of kissing to make up for. Months of touching, missed. Months of - _oh, god -_ months of how _that_ feels, the feeling of Nicole dropping her soft kisses to her jawline, then her neck, and kissing, sucking firmly just _ there_...all those many hours of longing and loss to make up for.

So it’s five full minutes before they even make it as far as the couch. A further five minutes still of gentle, almost nervously exploratory kisses sat on the couch before Nicole’s rising mumbles and moans have Waverly sinking down on her back, pulling Nicole down on top of her, wanting to cry with how good her solid weight feels on her, with how it feels when Nicole lets her hands finally start to travel where they want. They're planing up and down her body as they continue to kiss, up her side and back down to her hip, not touching anywhere else yet, not even beginning to hint at where Waverly is already aching to be touched, but Nicole's body is belying the clear intention to take it slow, because she's starting to move against her, starting that rhythm and press that is only theirs.

“Nic - “

“Hmm…” comes a breathless reply, somewhere under Waverly’s chin.

“Can we go upstairs? I want - oh, _jesus _\- space for this.”

Nicole keeps kissing where she is, once, twice, and Waverly almost forgets what she’s requested, until cold air comes rushing in, and Nicole’s standing, holding out a hand to her, beaming down at her.

*******

It may have been forever, but they haven’t forgotten this. Or maybe it’s just that it always came naturally to them.

It comes so easy. But they're more than usually careful tonight, both understanding that this is not just about sex. It's about their connection, a reconnection, testing and tasting and seeing if the sweetness of it is all still there.

So, they're slow. Slow in their progress up the stairs, stopping for kisses every other step; Waverly leading and relishing the rare equalisation of their heights as she kisses down to Nicole. Remembering that night, weeks ago now, the desperation of it. Not forgetting how that felt, but letting it settle into the patchwork of their history, to be joined with the tenderness of these kisses now, the simple joy of when their smiles grow too broad to kiss.

Slow, too, once they reach Nicole's bedroom. Slow, to lie down together, slow to move their hands over each other. Waverly tentatively reaching a hand under a shirt, Nicole just skimming the curve of a hip, all the while kissing, pressing into each other, close, so close.

So it's an age before shirt buttons are popped open, pushed off shoulders, then eventually shucked off completely. Another age of building excitement at just that, before Nicole's jeans and even Waverly's shorts too are suddenly too heavy, and both of those are pushed down and lost too. How long has it taken to get to this point, both down to their underwear, lying side by side, looking into each other's eyes. Taking a breather, both incredibly conscious of the moment of what's to come.

Nicole is running her fingers through Waverly's hair, combing through the kinks left from it being let down. Pushing the strands gently back and away, a look of soft and fond wonder at the intimacy of being allowed this easy touch. Waverly is just gazing back at Nicole as she does this, running idle fingertips up and down the curve of Nicole's waist, her hip. Enjoying the shivers and smiles this touch provokes as she hits familiar, sensitive spots.

She smiles herself, and then lets her hand drift further down the side of Nicole's hip, enjoying the new reveal of long legs, bare now the jeans have finally been peeled off and discarded.

She stops.

"Wave?"

Waverly's hand stills, fingers caress, and she realises what she's touching.

Dreading it, but needing to see, she half sits up, leaning on an elbow, and looks.

Three long scars run halfway down Nicole's leg, still standing out dark and angry against Nicole's pale skin, not near faded to the pearly translucence of some of her others. Running from close to her hip, tracing a half-spiral inwards all the way to Nicole's knee.

She pushes Nicole gently on her back, and sits up properly, traces the lines of them with just the tips of her fingers.

Nicole watches her, silently.

"I hate them." Waverly eventually murmurs.

"Because of what happened after? With us?"

Waverly huffs out a laugh of disbelief. How like Nicole to think of her own scars as to how it affected someone else?

"No. Well, yes, okay. That too. But no, my love. Because they're a reminder of how badly you've been hurt."

Nicole looks at her a long time. Thinking. Working something out, maybe.

"That's true. But Waves?"

"Mm?"

"They're also a reminder of what I've survived. They show that - they're evidence of healing."

Waverly takes this in, studying the deep pink and raised flesh of the long marks, trying to see them through Nicole's lens.

She gives up. Looks back up.

"Have you?"

"What?"

"Healed."

Nicole's soulful eyes look bruised, and hold something Waverly's not sure she can ever remember seeing there before. Fear.

"Be honest, baby." she whispers her encouragement. Trying to convey to Nicole that whatever she says, she will only ever respond with love, and acceptance. "We promised each other the truth?"

And knows that their relationship has got a future after all, when she sees Nicole take that final step into vulnerability. Because she understands how much it costs her strong, proud love, to hold eye contact, and with just the simplest gesture, a single slow shake of her head, admit - 

_No_.

Waverly lies down next to Nicole again, and just holds her for a long moment. And then, making a decision, pushes down her own underwear. Leans up, and unclasps her bra. Naked now, open, hoping Nicole sees where she's going with this, she puts a gentle hand on Nicole's, just at her hip.

"Can I?"

A nod, and a small raise of Nicole's hips, and Waverly gently pushes Nicole's underwear down those long legs, taking care not to give any more attention to her scars. And Nicole does seem to get it, because then she half sits up a second, and removes her own bra in turn.

When both items of clothing are gone, cast carelessly aside somewhere on or off the bed, Waverly leans down, and kisses Nicole again. Just softly once, on the lips. And then shifts to sit, straddling Nicole's lap, pulling her long hair back and out the way. Nothing between them now, but the truth.

She waits, watching Nicole's face carefully. Seeing there an open desire for sure, as Nicole's eyes flit up and down her body, and how she first moistens her lips, then swallows, with the affect of it. But there's some sort of a hesitation there too, some sort of conflict.

And Nicole isn't moving to touch her.

"This okay?" Waverly whispers.

"Yeah. Uh-huh. Just - I've been thinking. About last time?"

Waverly quirks her eyebrows in acknowledgement, waits for Nicole to go on.

"I'm sorry. It wasn't - I don't know. I can't explain. It's like - we weren't on the same side? Does that make any sense?"

Waverly looks down a second. Yes, she knew exactly what Nicole meant.

"Yes." she murmurs. "Give me your hands, Nicole."

A little confused, Nicole complies; and then swallows again, harder this time, when Waverly brings them to sit on her own hips, her own hands resting lightly over them.

Waverly can feel Nicole's hands grip a little tighter there, and feels the thrill of her body's reaction to that, the warm wash of arousal. She can feel Nicole, under her, pressed up against her.

She keeps her hands on Nicole's. Lets them rest there for a second, lets Nicole take this all in.

Then, gently, she pushes at Nicole's hands. Locks eyes with the beautiful woman under her, and see when she catches a clue.

Nicole lets her push her hands down her thighs. Patient, and acquiescent, and a little curious, she goes with it as Waverly pulls them back up to her hips, lets them rest there for a second. And then Nicole's mouth falls open to a gasp as Waverly very subtly, but definitely, grinds down against her.

"Uh..."

"Okay?"

"Yeah. _Yes_. God - Waverly..."

Nicole's eyes are shining with something like awe now, because Waverly is moving her hands again, both of their hands, over her body. Moving them firm up round her waist, up past her breasts, skimming lightly there, a shiver of reaction from both of them then; then up to her shoulders, and then she feels Nicole's centre push up against her definitively this time, as hands tighten a little on her shoulders.

She meets that movement, pushes back down in answering reply, and, oh sweet _Jesus_, the way it feels...

She pushes Nicole's hands back down her again, and then their hands are moving together all over her body, picking up pace, and with a firmer touch, lingering now at her breasts, and the hint of a roll of both their hips has started to build into a definite rhythm. And when that's happening, when they're moving like that, together, she can't put off her own urge to touch any longer.

She finally pushes Nicole's hands back where they started, on her hips, and this time Nicole doesn't hesitate before her grip is firm, and those strong hands pull her down onto Nicole hard, and Waverly _moans_. She reaches a hand round behind her, and - not quite - she shuffles forward a hint, and leans back a little, and twists just a touch and - _yes_.

She rests the back of her fingers on the curls there, and stops their movement a second. Looks tenderly down at Nicole, seeing her mouth still hanging just open, her breathing short and shallow and a little shaky.

"Can I?"

She wants to make sure.

"Please - please baby - oh - _God _yes..."

Because Waverly has slipped a single finger down, and found Nicole. And Nicole has found something extraordinary, going by the look on her face. Waverly feels those hands grip her even tighter, and then, then, they move her. A long, slow roll of their hips together, and she goes with the movement, allows her finger to slip down Nicole with it, to where it is warmer, and wetter. Lets the momentum of Nicole's upthrust carry her back up, to where she started, and she circles, and presses, as Nicole presses herself back up to her, into her hand.

"Yes love," she says, as they repeat that whole movement again. "Oh god yes," as she feels the rolls shift and alternate with grinds, to honest to goodness thrusts. "Shit, you feel so good sweetie, oh god you feel so good, this feels so good..."

She thinks she might be babbling. She thinks she might lose control. Because they're building an ever increasing rhythm now, because Nicole's hands are firm at her hips, moving her as Nicole thrusts harder up against her. She doesn't know who's leading it and who's following, only that their bodies are finding the dance of each other again like they'd never once stopped, and her finger is slipping, and sliding, and Nicole, below her, is the most beautiful sight she's ever seen. Her body tense, stomach muscles tightening with each movement, her eyebrows knit together in concentration and need, her entire aspect hovering somewhere between abandon and control, and oh, that incredible, hypnotic, rocking movement. Nicole's head is pushed back now a little harder into the pillow, her breaths coming fast now, panting, gasping, her hands starting another drift and touch over Waverly's body, a slip down her legs, a caress up her sides...one hand reaches a breast and presses, and Waverly cries out at the touch of Nicole's palm against her sensitivity, feels herself start to flutter inside, and just about registers the flush now blooming on Nicole's chest, between breasts topped with dark, aroused points, and her hand is slipping now, Nicole is so very wet and their movements so wild, she needs to bring another finger in, and touches, firmer now, faster, and Nicole is whispering affirmations, shaping to a rising stream of incoherent moans, until finally, finally, with a rise of her shoulders off the bed and a grasp back at her hips and Nicole's desperate disbelieving wondering eyes locked on hers and with a final shuddering, shivering jerk, Nicole cries out her release.

Waverly feels herself clench hard around nothing as it happens, feeling the moment flow through Nicole to her, despite the lack of contact on her own centre. But it's okay, because the wonderful feeling of seeing Nicole then fall back to the bed, eyes fallen shut now, but mouth still open, sucking in long shuddering drafts of air, the look of shocked bliss on her face slowly giving way to a relaxed and guileless smile of just purest, purest content.

Waverly sits back a little again, and shakes her arm out; laughing with the simple joy of it all, laughing even at the ache of her shoulder that she'd not noticed til now, from being held so long in that awkward position. Laughing fondly at the way Nicole looks, lying with her arms fallen from her now and splayed haphazardly to the side. At how she looks, in this moment, just completely, blissfully, carelessly happy.

She laughs as she leans down, takes Nicole's face in both hands, then kisses her. Her hair falling around them, creating a curtain around them for a second as Nicole opens sleepy eyes and mumbles into her lips.

"Wow. Wow."

She laughs again, kisses Nicole again.

"Ohh, I love you so much Nicole. I love you so so much."

Laughs at Nicole's distinctively unromantic reply to this, a long, incoherent, _mnnnngh_.

Giggles, as she finally dismounts, but lies back down, moulding herself to Nicole's side, grabbing one of Nicole's arms and pulling it round her shoulders, slipping her own arm around Nicole's waist, feeling just so full of happiness and love for her. Smiling, unseen, as she nestles her head into Nicole's neck, placing one light kiss there as she finally feels some autonomy come back to her lover, in the form of Nicole's arm tightening around her, and pulling her even closer in, and then the other pulling the half of the cover she can reach as far over them as it'll spread.

They lay just there like that, in the peace of the moment, for long, long, perfect minutes.

"I love you too, Wave." Nicole eventually says, in a hoarse, reverential whisper.

Waverly smiles again, eyes closed. She nuzzles into Nicole a bit closer, and feels Nicole squeeze her tight again.

Her body reacts to that too, and she can't help the half-wriggle of a shiver.

_Be cool, Waverly. This is so nice. You don't need anything else._

"Baby? You okay, there?"

Waverly can hear the grin in Nicole's voice.

"Mm - hmm?"

Now Nicole actually laughs.

_Okay, yes, that maybe wasn't very convincing_.

Nicole turns towards her in their embrace, and gently tips up her chin, til they're looking into each other's eyes.

She looks _so_ happy.

And then Nicole leans, and kisses her. A firm kiss, then a deep one. Waverly feels the fire that had not yet burned down flare again, and catch, and she's pressing herself bodily into Nicole as she kisses wet and open back, not caring in the least now about what this says about the extent of her need.

Nicole rolls them both smoothly over, Waverly onto her back, and Nicole on her, continuing the kiss until they both need to come up for air, and then she's chuckling, warm and knowing. She starts her kiss down Waverly's body, but she's swifter than she'd usually be, firm and intent and moving unhesitatingly lower and lower, stoking and spreading that fire everywhere she kisses and sucks, as Waverly's wriggles again, almost overloaded with the sensation of it all and with just how much she _wants_.

"Oh god. Oh _god_. Oh baby, please, just, please ohh - fuuuuck!"

Because Nicole has understood, of course she has, and her long fingers slip unhesitating straight and _deep_ into her. And it's already so good, then she's crying out to heaven again, because there's tongue now too, on her, surrounding her, just _everywhere._ Then she's losing touch with the detail of the situation because all she knows is that Nicole is just there, she's everywhere, and when she starts the motion, the _thrust_...

"Oh god. Oh god. Oh Nicole, shit, _yes_, Nicole...oh - uh - "

Words are lost too, now. Her eyes are squeezed shut, and she's only vaguely aware of both her arms spread out to the side, balling and twisting the sheets for something to hold on to as she raises her hips in rhythmic exchange with Nicole's movements between her legs, meeting and urging her on, her legs spreading wide too, a silent language of surging need replied to with Nicole's firmer, deeper thrusts, the love of her mouth, her tongue.

Because this is talking, too. This conversation their bodies have, every bit the corollary and compliment of what they've told each other with their words. _I need you_, Waverly's body is telling Nicole. _I need you, and I trust you, and everything I am, I will give to you_.

And it's_ I've got you_, that Nicole is telling her back in return. _I've got you, and I see you, and I love you, and this, this, is how much._

Waverly can feel the gathering sensation, feel that approaching rush, and Nicole must feel it too, because her free hand clamps hard around the top of Waverly's leg, gaining purchase for them both. And Waverly knows she won't be able to hold off much longer if she looks, but she needs to see it, and she raises her shoulders off the bed, and looks down.

Nicole is stretched out full length between her legs, naked and covered in a sheen of perspiration, and her whole body is moving in time, her hips thrusting hard down onto the bed in time with the movements of her tongue and her arm. And yes, of course it's that which does it, because all of a sudden it's starting, and oh god this is going to be _huge_, and Nicole catches it and reacts and those final powerful strokes take her to the edge, and Waverly thinks she can see a smile in the crinkle of Nicole's closed eyes barely visible where she is, and, _oh, oh, ohh - _

Waverly's hands pull so hard on the sheet it pulls free from the bed, and her back arches, and her head's thrown back, and she thinks she must be shouting but everything's faded except for the incredible rush through her of what they've built together, and it's unbelievable, it's incredible, it's, just, _infinite_.

And then, eventually, somehow, it's over.

Her feet and hands and scalp are tingling. Her eyelids are suddenly heavy, and fall shut tight. She's aware of her chest still heaving, taking deep, gulping breaths of sweet air. She's aware of Nicole coming back up her body. She can't open her eyes yet, can't seem to move at all from where she is, painted to the bed. But she's aware of Nicole, hovering over her. She must be watching her.

She hears another low, quiet laugh. Then feels a shift, and Nicole's lips pressing a light kiss to hers.

She just about manages to kiss back.

Another shift, and there's a pull on covers from under her, and then there's a gentle pull on her, and she goes with it, instinctively rolling into Nicole, into the safety and warmth of her arms. Still coming down, still not fully conscious of her surroundings, just about enough to know Nicole is settling the covers properly over them both now.

There's another movement, and the quiet click of the bedside lamp, and the red-black behind her eyelids is black-black of night.

She nuzzles into Nicole. Nicole holds her. Nicole pushes her hair gently back from her forehead. Places a single, simple kiss there too. She's floating. Nicole's holding her. Nicole's right there. She's right here. They're there. Together.

The strange nonsensical thoughts of that pre-sleep dreaming gather and swarm, random bursts of colour and untethered memories flashing senseless through her mind.

But she knows the truth of the one sense left that hasn't yet slipped into sleep.

She hears Nicole whispering to her.

"I love you. I love you, Waverly. I love you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nicole's line about how she sees her scars is a very useful perspective switch, if you can manage it. Good for all kinds.
> 
> It's an in-character viewpoint for her at least. This being the woman who sees her history in terms of being a survivor, not a victim.
> 
> But I've been told by people who know these things that that's a viewpoint that can also sometimes be learnt, even if it doesn't come as naturally as it seems to to her.


	5. A New Year

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new year brings some new starts, some challenges.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After the euphoria of last chapter, this one was supposed to continue the healing. And, well, it kinda does?
> 
> But it got a little away from me, and ended up going to an unexpectedly dark place for one of our characters. (A plausible place I think, given what we've ended up learning about her - so like a lot of the characters' actions in this story I'm sort of sorry, but sort of not - I can see it.)
> 
> But yeah, I'm afraid this isn't the flat up and down fluff-fest I was originally intending it to be. If you're not up for reading about the sort of casual cruelty life has chucked at our heroes - and the sorts of places that can leave a person - perhaps give this chapter a miss. Next one, fingers crossed, should be a bit easier. 
> 
> (Oh, and romance language speakers, or the classically educated amongst you - I apologise in advance. Just go with it, okay? ;o) )

Waverly sits patiently in the reception area, waiting for Nicole.

The room she sits in is all warm pastel yellows and greens, comfortable seating, calming pictures of flowers and flowing streams and great big laughing dogs. Lovely, if perhaps slightly unsubtle reminders of the vibrancy and beauty of life, Waverly thinks to herself.

It all does a good job of covering up the primary purpose of the place. But not quite good enough. She'd seen the red emergency alarm button within easy reach of the receptionist's desk the first time they'd come here, and now couldn't help but notice it every visit since. The gravely encouraging leaflets in the plastic holders, and the helpline numbers on the posters on the walls too made no bones at all about the nature of their readers' visits.

But it's those waiting that really give the game away.

The care on the faces of those waiting with others, like she is. A tired, harried looking woman, streaks of grey in her hair and deep worry lines on her face to match, perhaps the mother of the sullen youth sat next to her, waiting to go in after Nicole. The tension in the postures of those who've come on their own. The deep breaths, and nervous stretches made upon standing when their name is in turn called.

A younger woman, not much more than a girl, who Waverly vaguely recognises from Shorty's, sits directly opposite her. She looks up and catches Waverly's eye, just for a millisecond too long. And so she can't pretend she hasn't, and that they didn't recognise each other, and so she instantly pulls her bleak look into the easy lie that is a nod and grin. Rolling her eyes like it's nothing, like this is just another wait for a late-running appointment at the municipal office.

Waverly returns the girl's look with a warm, genuine smile. And see how badly she's shaken by that, the girl looking down and away hurriedly, fingers anxiously tangling together. This is too raw a place to cope with real kindness.

Waverly does her the courtesy of looking away, too. Looks to the window to the warm spring light slanting in, doing a better job of lighting the place up than a thousand colourful pictures ever could.

*******

Spring's arrival had brought some long overdue thawing.

Winter in Purgatory is tough, a time to hunker down and get through. Amidst the cold, and the long dark evenings, it's right to let the dead things wither and die back; right to let the thick layers of snow just pile up over them and bed them down to just be.

And so it was that she and Nicole had spent their winter. Aware of what lay beneath the surface, knowing it was still there waiting to be addressed; but just as aware that the brutal cold of an Albertan winter was no time for opening up and exposing their bruised hearts.

So it was as if they had made a tacit agreement to just give themselves, each other, and their relationship, space to breathe and adjust.

It had been in fact, in many ways, a wonderful time. They had continued their slow walk back into each other's lives - but carefully. Slowly moving from weekday dates with just a kiss goodbye at the end, to Fridays or Saturday nights out with changes of clothes tucked into bags, not assuming, just in case. Almost scrupulously alternating ending these nights between going back to the homestead, and Nicole's house. Both extra conscious to take care that the other didn't feel like they were the one putting in extra effort, that they were the one pushing things along.

And of course as the coldest and longest nights drew in, Nicole exhausted after a long day as Sheriff, or Waverly getting more than enough excitement in their battle with Purgatory's evils, it made sense to start these dates indoors, as well as finish them.

And from there, it was just so easy to slide from a Friday night date into a Saturday too. Huddled under blankets and cuddled up in each others arms, a coffee and a kiss, and then more of both back upstairs, and then eventually it's late enough that the early setting sun tips the day into night, and could you drink a glass of wine now maybe? Well if you could - ? 

What started as home cooked meals, candles and conversation fell into a take-out or two, and giggling on the couch as Waverly used cover of blanket to slide a hand further up Nicole's thigh than Wynonna's scowling presence would normally allow.

Til it was just natural that they were back to long weekends with every possible moment spent together, weekends that stretched as far as Monday mornings and a final hurried attempt at pleasure in the fifteen minutes between Nicole's final, and really-I-mean-it-this-time-Waves final-final alarm going off. To throw them back into the working week with flush on their cheeks, and a bounce in their steps.

*******

Christmas had been mixed.

The Earp sisters had conspired to put on a show, and invited both Nicole and the wider gang to a Christmas Eve and Day double header celebrations at the homestead.

It has started jovially enough on Christmas Eve with an entirely dubious Wynonna eggnog special, and whiskey, and soon a deck of cards, and yet another boisterous round of Texas Hold 'em at the homestead kitchen table.

It was a great chance for the team to take a breath out of time, and just be themselves away from the life and death pressures of all of their lives. Dolls' naturally calm demeanour serving him well as a poker face, Jeremy squinting at his hand and the deck, trying to bring to bear some arcane system of card counting to the betting, with success limited by Doc's sleight of hand and single handed cuts throwing him out time and again. Wynonna gleefully and blatantly cheating, splashing the pot with her raises, as much to get under Nicole's skin and dial her down from the soft-eyed, puppy dog demeanour she was back to wearing around Waverly these days.

But when the next day had dawned, and it had eventually come to the Christmas dinner that all their preparations had been building towards, the moment that in theory they could all sit down and relax, it was those not sitting down with them that seemed to make their presence felt loudest of all.

Alice. Michelle. Willa, even. The family the Earp sisters had lost, and the family Nicole had never seemed to have had at all.

Wynonna seemed struck by it first, falling into moroseness and liquor, reaching for the bottle over and again until even Doc was raising his eyebrows and moving it out of her reach. Waverly tried to keep up appearances, working her smile and her voice higher and more frantic to try to keep the mood up, despite the increasingly worried looks Nicole was throwing her.

At one point Jeremy had simply asked for the salt, and Waverly jumping up to grab it for him had knocked over a glass, which had shattered, spilling red wine and shards of glass into Dolls' meal and all over the table - and despite his easy assurances that it was no problem at all, it was like the emotional dam had broken with it. Waverly had burst into tears, cursing herself for her clumsiness, and for ruining everything again, and fussing ineffectually at the spill, spreading the stain wider across the once-white tablecloth.

It had taken all of Nicole's calm and loving care to steer her away from the table, and back behind the curtain of Wynonna's room, to let her cry, and to try to calm her down. She'd held her, and held her, but Waverly just couldn't seem to stop from crying.

Eventually Nicole had left her a second, to greet the sombre eyes of those pretending to still be eating at the table. With lips in a tight line, and a shake of the head, she registered Wynonna's defeated shrug, and flicker of her eyes towards the stairs, even through Wynonna's whiskey haze.

_Take her upstairs, Haught. Just be there for her._

So Nicole had. And they'd laid together upstairs, listening to the clink and laughter of the festive atmosphere slowly building back up downstairs, as Jeremy and Doc formed an unlikely alliance to gee the party back into life.

Nicole had held Waverly, and Waverly had just cried and cried, for all they had both lost. Perhaps also in delayed guilt and fear and shock of the fact of her nearly adding each other to that list. Until the exhaustion of that combined with too much food and too much wine, and they both had fallen asleep at one of those untimely early hours of a holiday season.

When they awoke it was cold, and early: long gone two in the morning, if not closer to three. Creeping downstairs to search for juice for dry mouths, and to pick at cold greasy roast potatoes to stem incipient hangovers, and to pull the blanket more evenly over Wynonna's motionless form, passed out on the couch with mouth open and drooling, glass of half-drunk whiskey on the floor next to her loosely curled hand.

They'd stoked the low glowing embers of the fire first into sparks, and then into a reluctantly flickering flame strong enough to catch to the extra log they put on. Then they refilled their glasses with cold water, went back upstairs, and made quiet, simple, grateful love, in the peace and still of another night survived together.

*******

But a new year always carries with it some sort of optimism. It's not long before the mornings are a little brighter, and day pushes back night later and later every week. And before they know it it's spring, and the winter snows had crumpled and thinned and finally wetly slipped away; and then there's the annual miracle of thin green shoots pushing their way through the mulch of last year's browned and frost-bitten vegetation.

And on one of these spring mornings, during a long walk through the pine scented forests way in the back of Purgatory, they'd talked. Accompanied only by the scuff of boots through brush, and the chittering gossiping bird song of spring, Nicole had quietly but matter-of-factly admitted to Waverly that she was still struggling with all that had happened to her; now, and before. And that it was probably time she talked to someone about it.

*******

A door clicked open, and Waverly looked up from her thoughts. Nicole was leaving the therapist's office, joking slightly too loud in relief and embarrassment, all bluster and business, only Waverly maybe reading the shakiness in her smile.

She stands up, tilts her own gentle smile to Nicole, and takes her hand to lead her outside. She sneaks a quick look up to her partner, seeing that her eyes are dry, but red-rimmed, and swollen. She doesn't say anything yet, just waits until they are out in the relative anonymity of the parking lot, before turning to Nicole and slipping her arms around her neck. Reaching to pull her close as she can, on her tip-toes and wrapping Nicole in as much of a hug as five feet four and an infinity love can manage.

Waverly hasn't been asking any details about these appointments. Just lets the length of these hugs function as a weather vein for Nicole's emotions.

Today's is a long one.

"Tough session, sweetie?" she murmurs quietly over Nicole's shoulder.

She feels her love's arms tighten a second around her waist, Nicole ducking her head into a kiss to her shoulder. An excuse to then bury her face tight into Waverly's neck.

She gives it another minute, before squeezing Nicole again, then patting her back.

"Come on, you. Pancake time."

* * *

"Ladies, Gentlemen, Dragon-men, Immortal Gunslingers, a-welcome to the 12th formal meeting of the Black Badge Purgatory Sheriff's Department Joint Monster Squad, sorry - _Task Force_ \- conveyed in the wonderously appointed offices of the - "

"Okay, very good Wynonna, we all know what we're here for. Now - BBD turn to chair? Have you got the agenda? Here, I printed some spare copies - "

"Thanking you. Hear me, hear me, do we all accept the minutes as a true and fair blah blah god _damn_ these are dull - let's move on to business, which today is - "

"Come on, Wynonna. We talked about this. Having a record of what we've agreed is a _really_ important - "

"Sure thing Haught-to-trot - but if you _recall_, my favourite jeans have a permanent demon-goo reminder of what we agreed last time. Eeesh. That _smell_. Anyway, it's only you and the Earp family swot over here that ever read them..."

Waverly grinned indulgently at her sister and her girlfriend as they bicker their way through the start of the meeting. It was always a little like this, whoever's turn it was to chair. This time would be Nicole trying to impose from the floor some form of structure onto Wynonna's scatter gun approach to today's problem, a shape-shifting demon that Jeremy thought he had found a ploy to try to control. But then last time Wynonna had been equally disruptive of Nicole's carefully planned police presentation, chucking the accompanying papers she'd been handed over her shoulders, much to Nicole's very vocal annoyance.

Until it became clear from the razor-sharp questions Wynonna had asked that she must've read them fully in advance, good enough to have them memorised, and plenty good enough to shut Nicole up in astonishment for a clear five seconds with a spot on analysis of the flaws in Nicole's plan. Before the Sheriff thought on her feet to come back with the solution, and they'd got to a plan solid from every direction.

It was a strange push and pull, but after a while they'd found that, in the end, it worked.

"And so over to the nerd-squad - Jeremy, are you leading this one?"

Jeremy grinned eagerly, cuing up a presentation on his laptop. "Well, I need to give props to the original researcher here - " Waverly inclined her head in gracious acknowledgement - "for researching the nature and powers of today's target." He hits a button and the projector beams up a nondescript face of a small, slim, sloping shouldered, sandy-haired, and almost disappointingly unthreatening looking man.

"Oo-ooh. Hold me Dolls, I'm terrified." Wynonna interjects sarcastically.

"Wait for it, Earp." says Dolls. Arms crossed, face impassive.

"Yep. One Bartholomew Fife, and he's not much to look at, is he? According to Waverly's research, back in Wyatt's time he was a con-man. And his indistinct looks were his secret weapon. His grift relied on him being able to slip into the background after his cons so well his marks could barely recall what he looked like."

Waverly picks up the story. "The newspapers of the day ran stories about 'the invisible thief'? But this was in the old wild west, right? When everyone got their five minutes of notoriety. The story goes he got more and more boastful about the cons he'd pulled, until he blabbed so much about it when he got drunk, all Wyatt had to do was listen out to saloon gossip to hear every last crime he committed. When Wyatt eventually caught up to him he resisted arrest, and was shot waving his gun around, raving about how 'you'll never forget me again'.

"And so - " Jeremy picks up, hitting a button.

The next image that comes up is a screen-filling close-up of a rearing spitting cobra.

"Gah!" shouts Dolls, slipping off his perch on a desk, righting himself again, and then manfully and purposely clearing his throat. "I mean: proceed, Chetri."

"Sorry, boss" grins Jeremy, and hits another button. An enormous, hairy legged spider with multiple bulging eyes appears on screen. Nicole flinches, closes her eyes, and ducks her head and shoulders away from the screen. Subtly enough that only Waverly notices, keeping her smile and Nicole's secret to herself.

"The thing he's taken back from his stints in hell is the ability to shape-shift. Specifically, to shift into the image of the most distressing thing his enemy can countenance."

"Like Pennywise in IT, basically" Waverly adds, whilst unobtrusively leaning over and hitting another button. The display changes to the top of a cliff-top, vertiginous view falling away from the camera below. Doc winces, and then pulls the brim of his hat down to fully cover his eyes 

"What, the cool original miniseries, or the lame-ass movie remakes?" asks Wynonna, apparently genuinely wanting to know.

"More like reading the book?" Jeremy retorts brightly. "I mean, the worse thing you can imagine is always ten times worse in your imagination than it is when you actually see it, right?"

Jeremy goes on, a little more seriously now. "He changes his shape - but he gets into his victims's heads, too. The stories go back over time of people sent mad with fear after encountering him, unable to take the horror of what they're seeing and feeling."

"Well, screw that. He's gotta fear my big-ass gun, no? Why can't I just put a bullet between his eyes?"

"You'll have to find them first. The second he sees you go for Peacemaker he'll change shape so fast you've got no idea what you're aiming at - he's even been reported to change to smoke in the wind. We need to find a way of binding him to his regular human form before you can take him down."

"Great. Okay - please tell me you've got a plan for that, Jeremy?" asks Nicole, eyes open now but still looking a tiny bit shaken.

"Indeed I have! Or - we have. Maestro?"

Waverly takes over the laptop with the air of smug delight only found on a Waverly Earp about to impart some good old fashioned research.

*******

"So. Recap. There's five of us?" asks Nicole.

It's much, much later. And though the plan is now abundantly clear, what is equally clear, is how little either chair of the task force like it.

"Six. Five at each point of the pentagram, and one leading the spell. Fife in the middle, if we can get the incantations right. Now, he could try to target those forming the holding-charm, but it's most likely he'll focus his efforts on the spell-caster. Try to mentally destroy them before they can get to the binding part of the spell."

"Hey there." says Waverly, giving a nervous if determined smile and wave.

Wynonna looks at her. "Why have you got to do it? I'm stood there holding a candle like a choirboy on Christmas, whilst my little sister gets mentally savaged by the psycho-clown?"

Waverly rolls her eyes. "He's not literally Pennywise, Wynonna...."

"I hate to say it, Earp" Dolls interjects. "But I agree. The spell is in Latin, and the rhythm and pronunciation has got to be right. Both Chetri and I can get by - but if anyone's got the best chance, it's Waverly."

"Plus - most popular girl in Purgatory, here!" says Waverly, her sunny smile back out again, dropping a cheeky wink to go with it. "What have I got to be afraid of?"

Nicole still sighs. "I don't like it. There's got to be another way."

Jeremy and Waverly look at each other, then both look one by one at the frustrated, worried faces.

"I'm sorry - there's really not. Come on, guys," Waverly says gently. "It's vote time. All those in favour?"

Jeremy and Waverly's hands are straight up, and after a moment's final deliberation, so is Dolls'.

Waverly turns to her sister. "Wynonna. You know I can do it."

Wynonna grimaces. "I know you can, baby girl. And if it's a battle of minds - duh. It's got to be you."

Wynonna rolls her eyes in deference to the obviousness of this statement, and Waverly out and out beams.

"I just wish I could do it for you."

"I know. And I know you would if you could. But you really can't, this time, okay? Please let me do this?"

Wynonna puff out a breath, defeated. "Okay. Okay." Her head drops, as her hand raises. Doc shrugs, and puts his hand up too.

Everyone turns to Nicole. No-one says anything. She remains silent, just looking searchingly at Waverly.

"Sweetie. I won't do this without your okay. But I'm asking for that. I _can_ do it, Nicole. And you'll be right there, if anything goes wrong. Please? I'm asking you for this."

Nicole looks long and serious into Waverly's eyes. Then nods, and lifts just her fingers off the table in the final vote of aye.

* * *

And so it is that on the summer solstice, with the dying rays of the setting sun giving over to the flickering flames of five candles; the cusp of night and day at the very moment of transition between the lengthening and shortening of the days - and the conditions are right to hold a restless soul in limbo.

Bartholomew Fife is stood trapped within a five pointed pentagon of fire. A real and earthly prison of flame for the moment, set by Doc to provide a physical barrier whilst Dolls and Jeremy poured the fine powder that Waverly's spell would rely on into the flames, to set the necessary condition for his final magical binding.

He's in his human form right now, hooded eyes squinting dark under the wisps of his unkempt hairdo, turning and staring at the five stood at each point of the star, sizing them up, plotting his response.

Waverly waits until he turns to face her, for his eyes to narrow and lock on hers, before taking a deep breath, and beginning.

"_Per potentium cinque,_

_ Tenere catenis igneis _

_Audire mandatum meum!_"

The charred edges of the pentagram on the ground start to glow, and suddenly the honest yellow flame dies down only for an ungodly fire of blues and greens to leap up in its place. Fife fixes his eyes on Waverly, concentrates - and then shifts.

In his place is Wynonna as a child, holding a gun far, far too big for her.

"Daddy!" the spectre of the child says as the barrel of the gun waves uncertainly in the air. "I'll save you!"

"_Tolle tuum figura_" Waverly recites, whilst fear clenches her heart, that same fear she had that night, that same fear that had her waking in a cold sweat in night-terrors throughout her childhood.

The child squeezes her eyes shut at the same time as she squeezes the trigger of the gun, which goes off with an all-too-real sounding _crack_. Waverly flinches, and hears screams in her ears, not sure if it's memory or her true senses bringing in the awful panicked sensation of chaos and helplessness.

But she sees out the corner of her eye Wynonna, her real flesh and blood sister, adult survivor of all of this. And that fortifies her to go on.

"_Derelinquas nos!_"

The childish figure in the pentagram bends, and twists, and when it stands again it is another little girl, blond pigtails and shiny patent shoes and a beautiful black velvet dress. The girl looks at Waverly with hands on her hips, and an unvarnished look of disgust.

"Is _that_ what you're wearing to the party? Didn't your aunt and uncle get you anything new? I'm telling mummy you're going to have to get another ride. I can't go to the party with a _raggedy_ doll!"

There's a sudden wash of shame, and sadness, and the confused hurt of a child not understanding what they've done wrong.

"_Caro et anima_" she continues, hearing her voice begin to shake, as she watches the girl suddenly grow older, and shift, and somehow _split_, and then suddenly from nowhere there's a whole gaggle of girls, each in matching cheerleading outfits, and though they are standing in front of her, Waverly feels like they're towering over her, looking down at her. Looking down and giggling, some behind their hands, some openly, catching each other's eyes with sly and wicked looks.

Waverly remembers the feeling of being winded, the ringing in her ears where her head had crashed to the floor, the effort in plastering on an apologetic smile when she knew, _knew_ she had that move rehearsed down perfect.

"Whoopsy, Wave" says the tallest, through a supercilious, cruel smile. "I guess even new cheer captains need to practice, right?"

"_Derelinquas nos!_" she almost shouts, full of the anger and frustration she'd felt inside, even as she'd joked and flattered and self-deprecated her way back into her squad's hearts.

And then the demon was a girl no more, but now a man. Or a boy, really.

"C'mon, Waves!" he whined. "Stop blue-balling me!"

Waverly feels sick. She remembers feeling sick. Not the act - she'd done it before, and truthfully, enjoyed it. It'd felt exciting; powerful even. But as obligation - as expectation?

"C'mon, just give me your hand. Come onnn, Waverly!"

"_Revenite ad te_" she forces out, through gritted teeth, and feels tears start to well up.

He disappears, and Gus - _Gus_ \- stands in his place.

"Remember you need to be in for the gas man later honey? I swear, if we don't get that boiler fixed this week...if you hadn't heated all that water for the tub for us all - you're such an angel, whatever would I do without you? And you'll be studying for that test? Good, good. And Waverly, I _promise_ we'll all go out together on Monday. Wherever you want. Just with it falling on a Saturday this year - there's no way Shorty can get through a game-night Saturday without me - I swear last time it was goddamn _chaos_ until I turned up. And - sweetheart - don't get your hopes up too much about a card coming in the post for you, okay? That sister of yours doesn't give two moment's thought about anybody else. Honestly, if I knew where she was I'd knock a lick of sense into her skull...okay, that's me. There's that leftover meatloaf in the - oh, sorry, I'm forgetting again aren't I! There's eggs too, you could always make an omelette? Okay, good, good - be good, darlin'! Don't wait up!"

The feeling now is just..._flat_. Such a wide, empty, flatness, that it pushes out the possibility of feeling anything else. It pushes out the words of the spell too; she feels it slipping, feels everything slipping. She's failing at this, too. She fails at everything. She's just - worthless.

The tears swim and brim over, and for a second she can't see through them, but then she catches sight of a candle's flicker in the corner of her eye. And some small stubborn part of her is shouting through the fog - look up. Look _up_. Look at what you've got.

She knows she can't leave her focus off the demon for too long. But she lets her gaze flicker away from the phantom of Gus, and from all that awful bleakness, to the family she knows stands sentry by her now.

She sees her friend, Jeremy, looking every bit as terrified as her, squirming in fear, but still in place, his candle held out straight in two shaking hands. Doc, a veteran of too many stand-offs to hold his position with anything other than icy cool competence, candle in his left hand, his right lying in easy warning on his gun. Dolls, focussed and calm, mouthing the next words of the spell along to her, the fail-safe prompt in the wings for this the strangest of all plays.

She looks to Wynonna. The leather of her jacket painted blue and green with the reflected fire of otherwordly flame, whilst the darkening sky behinds her fades to stars. She looks for all the world like some ancient goddess of vengeance, just waiting for an excuse to swoop in to save her sister. Waverly thinks she sees tears in her eyes too, knows she sees them flash with that constant protective anger. But then catches something else there too, sees all she ever really wanted from her sister - _pride_.

A wind has got up from nowhere, stoking the flames up higher and higher, and whipping Waverly's hair as she turns back ready to say the final words of the spell to the cruel facsimile of Gus, who straightens, and stretches - 

And then suddenly it's calm, and quiet.

And Perry looks into her eyes, head tilted, confused.

"Waverly?" he says. "What are you doing up here?"

She feels like she's been punched. She feels a shock of recognition. She feels the tears, coursing down her cheeks now, her chest heaving with sobs, and she can barely remember where she is and what she's doing, let alone the next words of the incantation.

Because for all she's tried her hardest to forget this moment, she remembers. Of course she remembers this.

But there's something else, bone deep and irreversible, she remembers now too. _Nicole_. Always, always, Nicole.

She looks over, and Nicole is stood holding her candle tight in two hands, rooted in place and yet somehow leaning forward towards Waverly; every nerve and sinew pulling at her to leave her post and go to her.

Waverly lets her eyes roam over her, take her in for the thousandth time. Her red hair, burnished copper in the light of the flames. Her tactical uniform tonight, the symbol of her pride in her work, and herself, and her readyness for anything. The shape of her, the strength of her, the - god. Waverly takes in her furrowed brow, her deep liquid eyes, lips parted and breath coming steady but deep - the beauty of her. The _will_ of her; waiting for Waverly to prevail - no - expecting it. The trust of her, in Waverly.

The love of her.

Her eyes meet Nicole's, just for a second.

And it's enough. She sees a flash then of her whole life - what it could be, with Nicole by her side. With Nicole looking at her like this, so strong and steady and still; looking at her just so full of care, and admiration, and love.

And in the face of that feeling, all the fear and pain just slip away to nothing, and the words of the spell returns to her.

_"Derelinquas nos!" _she shouts; the final words near spat at the demon. Waverly feels an enormous rush of energy through her, and the lines of fire leap up and she watches first in fear and then amazement and then in eventual dawning triumph as the image of Perry shimmers and shrinks and contorts, until there's just a confused looking man, Bartholomew Fife, cowering in his place.

He's concentrating hard, and muttering under his breath, but to his visibly growing panic, he fails to shift again. Wynonna lifts an eyebrow for final confirmation to Waverly, and on her nod, breaks formation for the first time, casting aside her candle, the flames demarking Fife's prison snuffed out the instant it hits the grass.

She raises Peacemaker, and forces it right into the revenant's forehead.

"Make your peace, revhead. And leave us to ours."

As Wynonna squeezes the trigger, and the hot flames pull him down, Waverly leans in and adds her own hiccuping, tearful send-off.

"Derelinquas nos. Derelinquas me! Et ede faecam, you _shit-eater_!"

And with that the strange energy of the spell leaves her completely, and with it she feels all her strength drained away too. Her head is spinning, and her knees are suddenly weak, and she's afraid she'll fall, but then of course, Nicole is there. And she's turning into her arms, letting herself fall into the blissful oblivion that is Nicole's comfort and embrace, Nicole's kiss and murmurs into her hair. She lets her tears fall, feels them soak into the shirt where her face is pressed, only vaguely hearing the jubilation of the men's voices hollering and whooping, and Wynonna rubbing her shoulder awkwardly from behind. The confused tone of her voice, underlying the triumph of her words.

"You okay, Wave? _Great_ job, baby-girl! You were awesome! I loved when I could see you start to beat him. I mean, Gus? Perry?! What sort of monster is Perry?"

Waverly feels Nicole's arms tighten around her, and she wraps her own arms around Nicole's waist, pushes herself in closer into the warmth and safety that is Nicole, and allows herself to cry.

*******

"Waverly?"

Nicole is holding her, in her bed. She is curled up in her arms, head nuzzled under Nicole's chin, and though it's yet early, they are changed for bed, and the light is off. Lying swaddled in the not-quite-dark of a midsummer's night, with Nicole's arms around her, Waverly in fact doesn't want to go to sleep yet. She wants to stay in this moment of being loved, put off the sleep that will bring tomorrow. She just wants to stay in this place of safety, a little longer.

Nicole had barely let go of her since the showdown. Initially Wynonna had wanted to go and celebrate, but despite Waverly turning away from Nicole to only under one arm, trying her hardest to pull her face into a smile, the tears just wouldn't stop coming. And though she's nodded through them to her sister's suggestion of a drink, Wynonna looked worriedly back at her, and then at Nicole, and then let the matter drop.

And Nicole had not left her side since then. Had kept just a light touch of fingers on her back as they'd walked back to the road; then a warm hand on her thigh for the whole of the drive back to the homestead. Nicole quiet, her face mostly neutral and calm, just the hint of the crease between her eyebrows as the tell to her worry. Waverly taking her arm for the few short steps up to the Homestead, as they'd gone wordlessly inside. She'd even stripped down alongside Waverly in the bathroom, and stepped in the bath to shower with her too, holding her in the cramped and awkward space when yet more tears rose, and fell, lost in the mingle of the hot water and their naked bodies.

She'd let Nicole help her towel dry her long hair too, in the still-warm steam of the bathroom, closing her eyes and enjoying the simple care of that gesture. And then they'd both put on their nightwear, and come through to her room, and so, here they both were.

"Yeah?"

"Can you - do you want to talk about it? What happened back there?"

Waverly just burrows a little closer into Nicole's neck, and holds a little tighter around her waist. She really doesn't know.

"I really don't know."

"Okay. Okay. It's okay. Just - I'm here."

They lie there, quiet. Waverly feels Nicole lift her hand from where it's been on Waverly's arm, gently sandwiching it against the soft skin of Nicole's stomach. It settles on her head for a second, and then strokes; slow, and soft.

Then drops, and finds its home on Waverly again. She feels a kiss to her forehead.

It's strength enough.

"It was in high-school."

She feels Nicole still, almost frozen under her. Then her chest rising in a slow inhalation, then a fall again.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. On the roof. Perry found me up there."

They're quiet again, for a while. Until in a scared whisper, Nicole takes the plunge for both of them.

"And what - what were you doing up there?"

"I was - um. Sitting on the edge. Trying to make my mind up. Perry kinda decided for me."

There's a long, shocked silence. Waverly pushes on.

"I loved my life. Honestly, I did. And I loved my friends, and my family. Gus. Curtis. Wynonna - even though - anyway. I did love my life Nicole, I promise. It was just - "

She sighs. She's never tried to explain it before.

"It just got to be so much, sometimes."

She feels Nicole squeeze her, tight, and knows she's gearing up to something. But it's another full minute before Nicole is ready to ask her next question. The only question, really.

"And now - I mean - do you ever - do you ever feel like that, now?"

It's a long, long time, in which Waverly thinks, turning that question over and over, unable to provide an answer. How can she? She won't lie to Nicole. Not any more. But she can't seem to bring herself to say the truth out loud.

She notices eventually a strange shaking started, under her cheek. She shifts, half sits up on her elbow, and sees that Nicole has started to cry.

"Oh, baby, I'm sorry. Oh - Nicole? It's okay - I'm here, okay?"

Nicole nods, holding her breath in a familiar attempt to try to control herself, and looking up straight into Waverly's eyes, an aching look of helpless vulnerability, as Waverly takes turn as comforter, stroking the tears away from her cheeks, pushing strands of hair back from Nicole's face, heart overfull of love and tenderness for this woman, and with regret for what her admission was doing to her.

Finally Nicole wins her battle over the tears, and Waverly leans down to kiss her. And feels and understands that Nicole's grounding herself too when she lifts her head and kisses her back too, a little hard and a little desperate and just an awful lot in love. And when it finally breaks for Nicole to take another long, shaky breath, Waverly just folds herself back into her arms, letting Nicole pull her in tight, and rock her from side to side.

She recognises this. They've been in enough life and death situations that she recognises Nicole's fear by now. 

"It's okay, my love" Waverly soothes. Feeling, in truth, better for being the one to be offering the comforting words. "It's okay."

"Maybe - " Nicole's tone is cautious, tentative. "Maybe - I find those sessions I go to really helpful, Waverly. I know we already talked about this and you didn't want to, but maybe it would be a good idea if - "

"Yes."

She almost feels Nicole's shock, as the rocking motion stops for a second, before continuing again, almost imperceptible now.

How far they've come, that they don't need to fight over this. How far she's come, Waverly thinks ruefully to herself, that she realises that the idea of caring for herself, too, is not something that she needs to fight.

"Yeah?"

Waverly is touched in some deep, complicated way, by the note of eager hope she hears now in Nicole's voice.

"Yeah. I think so. Yeah."

Another slow rise and fall of Nicole's chest, under her cheek. And both of their arms tighten, around each other, squeezing tight and long. And when they relax, the fall together into sleep is a little easier, somehow, than it's ever been before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said a little while back that sometimes I just want to read a fic that is basically just 6,000 words of Wayhaught cuddles?
> 
> I think with this chapter I may have inadvertently written it. Oops. (And hope that at least partly makes up for the places it goes to.)


	6. Choices

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another couple of seasons, another couple of choices.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a little tiny wee chapter to finish off I'm afraid. This was originally all going to be in with the last chapter, but that was such a heavy one it needed its own space to breath, as it were! Sorry this one's a bit of a shorty as a result.

The low angling rays of an early evening sun are still bright enough to pick out the red and gold highlights amidst the crackling brown of unswept leaves carpeting the front yard. But it no longer carries much warmth; and so the two approaching figures, one short, one tall, are doing their level best to hurry up the path to the house.

Well - hurry as much as they can in the circumstances.

"Okay - come on you - up you come, I've got you - one more step - okay, great! Now, just a second - okay! In you go."

Nicole hobbles through the door Waverly is holding open for her, crutch under one arm, and a knee high blue plaster cast around a leg. With the crutch not yet second nature she limps and hops and wobbles her way over to the couch, Waverly solicitous at her side, lightly touching one elbow in moral, if not actual physical support.

"Okay - now, turn - give me that a second? Okay - now, hold my hands and - there. There you go!"

Waverly beams down at the apparent achievement of their lifetime that is Nicole Haught back in her house, and sat down on her couch.

Nicole frowns up at her, a little grumpily. "I'm not a baby, Wave. Stop treating me like one."

Waverly sits next to her, taking care not to bounce the seat or jostle Nicole's legs. She brushes aside a non-existent strand of hair from Nicole's forehead, then leans and places a light kiss to her cheek.

"Yes you are. You're _ my _ baby."

Nicole tries and fails to keep the scowl in place, a smile creeping in its place. She leans back, wincing a little as Waverly lifts her leg and carefully lowers it down onto cushions set on the coffee table in front of them. Waverly searches for, finds, and hands the television remote over to Nicole.

"There. Now, you're all set."

Waverly feels absurdly happy and proud of herself to have Nicole simply settled in her own home; and judging by the contented shuffle of Nicole into the back of the couch, have made her something approaching comfortable.

"Now. What can I get you? Tea? Are you hungry yet? I could make you some toast? Get that hospital taste out of your mouth?"

"Mm - yeah. I could do some tea?"

Waverly nods in satisfaction, and starts to move off towards the kitchen. But she catches Nicole's eye, and there is something in there that holds her in her place.

"Hey Waves? Thanks for this."

Waverly flaps a hand dismissively and puffs out a breath of _ of course._

"No - " Nicole leans forward, and snags one of Waverly's hands. Looking up at her, brown eyes open and grateful. "Thank you for not being mad at me this time."

"Oh. Well." Waverly is caught a little off guard for a second, swinging their linked hands a little as she tries to think how to respond. "I mean - I'm not exactly _not _ mad, sweetie."

Nicole grins, and tugs lightly on the hand she holds; and Waverly puts up no real fight but sinks back down again next to Nicole. This time Waverly takes her time in raising a hand and gently, tenderly caressing the back of her fingers down Nicole's face.

"I can't believe you got hurt again. But you're in one piece. And you're safe. And - well, I'm not sure I exactly think you and my sister running full pelt over a rotten beam was exactly a percentage call - "

Nicole interrupts her gently.

"It was a calculated risk, Waverly. We knew the building wasn't in great condition, and locating the stake-out up there was a risk if they bolted - but we all signed off on that being the plan."

Waverly sighed to herself. "I know. I know! And that's why I'm only a little tiny bit mad at you right now. And - I'm working on that, even."

She chances a look at Nicole, who she sees to her relief is smiling fondly back at her.

"It's okay. I'm glad that you still care."

Waverly sighs ruefully. "Of course I care! I'm just trying to not let that get in the way of the job. And I know I'm not perfect yet - but I figure, I've got a life-time to practice this, right? I mean, are you _ ever _ going to stop being so brave, and so - "

Nicole is looking at her oddly, and it stops her dead in her tracks.

"A lifetime?"

Waverly drops her head. Shrugs, almost in embarrassment.

"Well - yeah. I mean - I hope! It is Purgatory, after all…"

She trails off. Nicole is looking back at her, surprised. No - it's not surprise. Wonder.

"You think of us like that? I know we've been doing really great recently, but…"

Waverly bites her lip. Nods, a little nervously. And waits for Nicole to go on to what she really means.

"And - you still think of me like that? Even now you've seen that I'm not who you thought I was?"

Waverly frowns, genuinely puzzled.

"What do you mean?"

Nicole shrugs, and it's her turn to look down, and away.

"Now you've seen I'm not - I'm not the strong person I used to act like I was. When we first met."

_ Oh. Oh, Nicole._

Waverly reaches out, and turns Nicole's face gently back to face hers. Looks straight into those deep, brown, soulful eyes, trying to convey every bit of sincerity she's feeling.

"Sweetie - you're _stronger_. Now I know you, and everything you've been through? And how you're dealing with it now - I'm so proud of you for that, Nicole. Have I told you that? And that's the harder thing to do. You're _ so _ much _stronger_ to me than when we first met."

Nicole swallows, looking for a second a little bit lost.

"And I didn't think I could possibly fall in love with you any more than I already did, back then. But - now that I know you - all of you - all your good parts, and those parts you struggle with too. I think I do? I think I do love you more. I love all of you. All of _you_, Nicole - every part of you. And - well, I think I always will. You're what I'm meant for, Nicole. I mean - yes, I know I'm meant for Purgatory, too. And for Wynonna. And - "

Waverly hesitates, screwing her face up in a grimace for a second, but pushes on.

"And the curse. Of course. And I know all of that is a tough ask for you to take on, and I know how much all that has hurt you. And I know how much _ I've _ hurt you - "

"No - come on baby, we don't have to do this now - "

" - I _ know _ how much I've hurt you, and I know how many mistakes I've made - but I am trying. And I promise I'll keep trying. And one day, maybe you'll really have forgiven me - "

"_Wave _ \- "

" - and I'll have earned your trust again and maybe then you'll feel the same way about me and maybe when that happens I'll ask you about forever, but for now?"

Waverly realises her words have gone on faster than she'd meant, and she runs out of steam. She doesn't really know what she wants to say anyway. So she just falls back on the simple, forever truth.

"Just. I love you, Nicole Haught."

Nicole looks stunned for a second, taking the unexpected heaviness of it all in. And then turns a little in her seat, as far as she can with her foot still up, and leans, and kisses Waverly.

So Waverly kisses her back. Soft, and sweet, lips meeting in a quiet reverence of love. Not the fire of yearning this time, just the warmth of them, the gentle caress and communion of touch; Waverly kissing all her care and promise to Nicole, and feeling acknowledgement and acceptance, and the offer of that self same love kissed right back.

Their lips finally still and hold for the longest time, then part and fall back.

"I love you too, Wave." Nicole whispers, a little hoarse. "So so much."

Waverly is still leaning close to Nicole. Whose eyes are half lidded, and whose breath is coming a little shakily now through parted lips. Her eyes seemingly focussed down on Waverly's own, that she can still feel tingling from their kiss. Tenderness in that look still, but - also, now, want.

_ Oh. And - there it is. _ That fire catching, now.

Waverly matter-of-factly gets up, and carefully, but determinedly, swings Nicole's leg off the coffee table, taking the cushion with it, swinging both round to place carefully down on the low side of the couch, pushing and pivoting Nicole down in turn to lay her head down on the other.

"Wave - what are you doing?"

Nicole's voice is a laugh now, realising really what is happening, but playing along in ignorance, as Waverly lies down next to her, precarious on the edge of the couch cushions, really only Nicole's arm slipping automatically around her shoulders and pulling her tight into her love's long body keeping her there.

"Oh. Nothing..." Waverly replies innocently, as her hand slips down to the bottom of Nicole's t-shirt, pushing it up and then caressing the soft skin underneath. Nicole inhales sharply, and her objection comes out breathily, and without conviction as Waverly's hand planes and caresses idly around.

"Wave - I'm not sure we both exactly fit - " she says, even as her arm tightens around Waverly in a contradictory message, anchoring them both tight and together.

Waverly can't exactly deny the complaint, so in response she instead shuffles herself half on top of Nicole, careful to entangle her legs only with Nicole's one good one, feeling that close contact from top to toe now fire up every sensitive nerve on her body. She finishes the motion with almost a wriggle up to Nicole, and a kiss, this one still tender and loving, but longer. Then another kiss, just a little firmer this time, and then it grows deep, and then it's harder again, both getting lost in it, Nicole's other hand sneaking through her hair to find the back of her head to hold her in the kiss, until they finally have to break apart, both panting now, both struggling for breath.

Waverly is fair thrumming, feeling the press of their her body into Nicole's below her, the brush of their noses, the heat and dampness of their breath between them, holding that intimate closeness as they just live in that perfect moment of potentiality, unheeding now of the awkwardness of the crowded couch, unheeding of anything else but each other.

"I still hate that you take so many risks, Nicole. But god. You look _ so _ hot in your tactical uniform…" she murmurs, before slipping her hand easily down and inside the loose sweatpants Nicole had worn out of the hospital. She hears Nicole gasp again, and then groan with want as she teases first just a light touch. She smiles to herself, ducking to kiss the soft skin behind the angle of Nicole's jaw, tasting and kissing the strain of tightening tendons, the flutter of a racing pulse, feeling her own arousal build and pool as she slips her hand down under again, and touches, caresses, coaxes out and then loses herself in Nicole's.

* * *

They all wait until after the Christmas meal for the exchange of presents. All pleasantly tipsy and uncomfortably full, they make a slow lazy job of exchanging scarfs and books and best whiskeys, and a box-set of classic western DVDs for Doc - with an accompanying handwritten voucher from Jeremy promising a lesson on how exactly to go about watching them.

It's warm and contented and cozy, the haphazard decorations hung all round the homestead brightening the old place up, and the crackling hissing fire fed by a steady supply of the logs Doc and Dolls had competed to chop several months back. And too, showily if ineffectually, by the diminishing piles of gift wrap Wynonna pushed over the guard, with protestations that she's just clearing up belied by the pyromaniac's glint in her eye.

Alice is back of course, now. Bottom shuffling around the legs of the reclining adults, playing determinedly and delightedly with the cardboard box her hand-made, German-imported, beautifully decorated and several times more costly than most of the other presents put together music-box had come in.

Dolls is the nearest to her, and so he's the one that leans down and carefully stops her when she attempts to put half the dusty box in her mouth, gently taking it from her and then swinging her up into his lap to distract her from her too-like-her-mother affronted frown.

"Who's a naughtiest Earp? Who's her mama's girl?"

Mama Earp - Grandma Earp now, really - bustles back in, bearing slices of Christmas cake, ignoring the pained groans she's met with and forcing a plate on each of them.

Nicole is the only one who manages an approximation of something like a smile when she takes hers. But catches Waverly's eye when Michelle's back is turned, puffing out her cheeks and raising her eyebrows in resigned disbelief at the idea of yet more food.

Waverly giggles at this, Wynonna next to her on the couch nudging her hard by way of not-too-subtle hint to cover this up in front of their mother. And receives a jab in return in the ribs, then a pinch right back, and with a squeal and a squirm and a wriggle the sisters are soon locked in some ungodly scrap of attempted noogies and tickling.

Michelle rolls her eyes, albeit with a secretly delighted twinkle in there too, gives up on the cake distribution, and gratefully accepts the glass of whiskey that Doc hands up to her.

It is just messily, contentedly, perfect.

"Er, hey, guys?" Jeremy says. He coughs, weirdly nervously.

Waverly squirms out of the half headlock she'd found herself in, and looks over to him. Others look blearily round. Even Alice Michelle seems to realise something's up, giving up her determined attempt to put every one of her fingers up Dolls' nose and looking round to Jeremy instead.

"Is that another present left under the tree?"

They all look, and see he's right - there was a box back there, obscured before now by the gift-wrap and tinsel wrapped around the tree's base. 

Not a very exciting one though maybe - shoebox sized and shaped, and rather plainly wrapped.

Nicole looks over from her sprawl on of the old armchairs, and owns up.

"Oh, yes. Sorry, I forgot about that one. Wave - that's one more from me."

Waverly smiles.

"Nicole! You've already given me two more than I got you! I thought we made a deal this year?"

Nicole shrugs, sheepishly.

"Yeah, I know. I just saw this, and thought it would be perfect for one last Christmas gift."

Waverly smiles again, and gets a ridiculous rush of childish pleasure at the idea of having one more present to unwrap. Jeremy makes a meal of the contortion of crawling under the tree to pull the box out, and hands it off to Waverly.

She holds it in her lap. Definitely a shoe-box, she thinks - and she can guess what's in it, too. They'd been shopping for Wynonna's gift, a new set of good winter boots, when Nicole had found Waverly hesitating over a pair of very beautiful, very expensive, and completely impractical for Purgatory pair of gold satin slip-ons, which she'd ultimately put back with regret.

"Baby..." Waverly chides Nicole delightedly, as she tears into the gift-wrap. Opening the box to find lemon tissue paper, and - 

\- more lemon yellow tissue paper.

And no shoes.

She frowns, hunting confusedly through the apparently empty box. Embarrassed for Nicole - she couldn't possibly have failed to realise they'd sold her an empty box, could she?

But then her hand hits something - hard, and rectangular, and solid. And a flash, a premonition hits her.

She looks down at what she's found. Then up at Nicole.

Her girlfriend is sitting across the room from her, focus entirely back on her, looking, Waverly thinks with a strange rush of fond clarity, exactly like she did the first time she went to work as Sheriff.

Proud, and nervous, and sure, and somehow, more perfectly herself than Waverly had ever seen.

Waverly pushes the paper aside to more clearly reveal the smaller box, perched inside the bigger one.

It's a hinged box with a curved lid, black; with gold trim around the sides.

"I'm sorry for doing it like this." Waverly hears Nicole say, as understanding rushes in, and a feeling like the world is slowing down takes her woozily over. Waverly just stares down at the box, a whirl of shocked emotions, as she hears Nicole go on.

"But it's deliberate. Because, Wave, I'm not going to give this to you. Make you take it, or make you refuse it. Because I want it to truly be your choice."

Waverly looks up at her, and she can see Nicole's eyes begin to shine, just as her voice is thickening, struggling through the prepared speech.

"But if you want this - I want you to have it. And okay - I'm sorry for doing this here, and now, too." Their eyes are still fixed on each other, but Nicole raises just one hand as if to indicate and encompass all those watching quiet around them, and all that surrounds them too. The mess. The homestead. Purgatory.

Aside from the crackle and settle of the fire, Waverly can hear a pin drop.

"But I wanted you to know - it's really important that you know - I want all of it. All of what's yours, and - "

Alice Michelle has finally got bored of this oh-so-lacking entertainment, and with an ear-splitting whine and arch of her back, wriggles her way out of Dolls' grasp. It breaks the tension of the moment, and somehow breaks Waverly's frozen disbelief, and both her and Nicole smile through gathering tears at their grumbling niece, and laugh, as Wynonna scoops up her child and stands with her, jogging her up and down in her arms.

"Shh now kiddo. Chocolate in your porridge tomorrow if you shh now. Yes. Yeeesss. Ye-bbbb."

Wynonna has offered the ultimate sacrifice, in allowing Alice to poke and pull at her lips like a teething toy.

Nicole laughs, under her breath, and then continues.

"Erm. Where was I. I mean - "

Waverly interrupts.

"Nicole?"

Nicole stops, suddenly looking for the first time, unsure.

"Yes?"

"Would you get over here and do this properly please?"

Nicole's shaky deep breath seems almost involuntary.

And then she smiles. She smiles, her best dimpled smile breaking like summer sun across her beautiful face; and Waverly feels it to her heart, feels it in her soul, feels as young and as wise and as carefree and as petrified and as excited as the day Nicole had first sauntered into Shorty's and her life. And watches the love of her life stand, wipe sweaty hands on her jeans, and then walk over to her.

Nicole crouches down, and then she's in front of her, settling patient and proud on one bended knee.

Waverly picks up the jewelry box, and Nicole gently takes it from her hands, setting the larger cardboard box forgotten aside.

She looks down for just one second, taking a final deep breath.

And then looks up, popping open the lid and holding it out to Waverly. A golden ring, a diamond, and its guard of two tiny inset ammolite gems peeks out. And the ring is so perfect and beautiful, but it's nothing to the beauty of Nicole, looking up at her in open and honest adoration.

"Waverly Earp. I have since the moment I met you, loved everything that you are. And I've watched you grow, and with that somehow, my love has grown too. And - I know I'm not perfect. I know we're not perfect. It's not always going to be easy. But I want to be the one who walks beside you for the rest of your life. The one you try with. And - I've always been willing to do anything for you. But I think - I think now I'm really able to, too. If you'll have me. Will you marry me, Waverly?"

Waverly can't speak, can't seem to do anything but fall forwards into Nicole's arms, crying and nodding and laughing with shock and joy through the tears, as Nicole holds on to her in a huddled crouching hug for a second, then pushing her back, finds the ring finger of her left hand, and steadies the engagement ring there.

"Is that a yes?"

Waverly nods again. And then finally manages to get her words out in sobs, as Nicole slips the ring on.

"Yes. _Yes_. Oh my god. Yes."

Jeremy, in on the plan from the start is buzzing and boasting of his small part of affairs. Doc, who'd disappeared off to the kitchen at the first sight of the ring, had now returned bearing the very expensive bottle of champagne he had originally put aside for the new year, and pops the cork wearing a very pleased with himself grin. Mama Earp and Dolls are scurrying around trying to find anything clean and vaguely resembling to a wine glass to pour it in.

And Wynonna is stood in the middle of them all, head tilted and tears on her cheeks too, bouncing Alice Michelle up and down in her arms, who is chortling throatily and happily to herself, unsure why the adults' show has suddenly got so much more lively, but evidently very pleased it had.

And Nicole and Waverly have risen from the puddle of their cradled crouching hug on the floor, and are now just stood in a close, crushing embrace, buried in each other's arms and wordless with joy. Waverly eventually pulls back a shadow to slip her arms up Nicole's body, round her neck, to look up into the eyes of the person she's going to spend the rest of her life with.

Nicole bends, and kisses her just once, hard, and then Waverly feels arms hold firmer round her waist, and she instinctively tightens her own hold, and feels her lover - no, her _fiancé_ \- straighten, and lean back, and Waverly is pulled into the air, and she looks down at Nicole, laughing up at her as she completes a long, slow, giddy turn, the full dizzy three sixty in the midst of the of the burgeoning chaos of celebration around them.

Nicole finally lets her down, and tries to kiss her again, but has to give up, because both of them are laughing, and both of them crying. But it's okay. It's okay that the best they can do is stutter and hiccup the words to each other.

"You're mine?" asks Waverly, still hardly believing, cupping Nicole's face now with both hands, ring glinting on her finger. "You're really saying you're all mine?"

"Completely." Nicole promises. "And you - you'll be mine?"

Waverly sniffs, laughs. "Of course I'm yours. I've always been yours." She drops her arms around Nicole's waist again, leans forward, and feeling those long arms wrap tight around her shoulders, just buries herself in Nicole once more. Mumbles into her chest. "Always been yours. Forever. Completely."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading. Thank you for sharing this experience with me, and by doing that, enriching it.
> 
> And thank you, all you lovely Earpers here and everywhere, for everything. I had written a really long, overly specific, and certainly overly emotional note saying exactly what I mean by that! But realised it all pretty much just boils down to, thank you.
> 
> Thank you for being a really big and important part of this really big and important part of my life.
> 
> Merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate it, and a Happy (Earping! 😃) 2020 to all of you!
> 
> Seda  
xxx


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